The more I see this happen - the more I think we need to change the economy for stolen data. Remember when they stopped arresting prostitutes and targeted the John's ? Locks can be picked and there to keep honest people honest. Credit monitoring must be pretty cheap as more companies buy it as an insurance product. This data is going to be stolen !

Now we need to make it worthless.

In the world of digital "signup on the web" stolen data can be used pretty quickly. Like the bad checks loop hole (popular on Craigslist and others). The detection of bad id's needs to be easier and products for purchase harder to get. There are days that I believe the 3 credit reporting agencies are responsible - they created a market & product that is easy to abuse. Yes - I can flag my credit rating (even "lock" it) - but then my life becomes difficult.

Maybe a smartApp that allows easier monitoring and blocking of requests. My AMEX credit card already gives real time purchase details on my phone. This might aid in detection.

Now - how to reduce the value of the products? (or increase the cost to acquire).
And just maybe - make it expense for the companies that hold this data to the point they find another way.

I too knew the answer of North Pole - but suspected it was a trick question. My "second" guess was about relative position. If memory serves - the Earth rotates East. Therefore if you walked West at an appropriate speed you could maintain your position relative to the plane tangent to the surface. Kind of like a circus animal that walks on a large Ball or treadmill. The animal stays on top (yet moves through space) on the ball - or treadmill, you maintain a constant position in the room while the floor moves. So if you walked South --- then West -- then North you would wind up in 3D space in the original relative position.

The more I thought about this though, the speed of your walk would need to be faster during the West journey. Your North/South walk would produce a Zig shape. It isn't sqrt(2) - you trace a isosceles triangle (non-right triangle) and North/South must be the same length.

I'm ignoring the arc as 1 mile doesn't seem significant.

The link in the article is concat of itself - needs to be repaired.

I was going to suggest contacting the pump vendor and see if they have a solution. It might be considered cheaper to pay this guy than it is to fix the problem.

Or - get a dozen of those new Intel PCs on a stick. Rather than running a dozen wires across the parking lot to trip on or finding a managed switch that can support that many VLANs - just create PC dongles.

The uploading software is probably hard coded to look for this well known IP address. It's possible that they are all direct connect (aka don't care IP) - but I wouldn't be surprised if not.