I was searching for a small quantity of 4/3A batteries to rebuild a dead nicad battery pack in a laptop that’s not worth $50, so I’m surely not going to pay $100 to have someone else solder some wires for me.. the battery pack’s system is fine; the nicads are just 8 years old, and toast.

I stumbled across the yellowest web page made in the last eight years. There was an interesting article on the whole ‘getting free power’ thing, from both a scientific, and blatantly english stand:

”...20 mA at 48 volts is about one watt. Here in Utah we pay about $.07 per kilowatt-hour. So by tapping power from the phone line you could save seven cents in 1000 hours, or 41 days. Now you are sticking-it-to-the-man to the tune of 61 cents per year. “

Given these numbers (it’s $0.08 here), it’d still take about 150 years to get $100 worth of “free” electricity.