[OT] What might this object be?

[Lauren]

Sounds like a theft prevention device for high-tech games and equipment.
There on nearly everything expensive and easily stolen in technology stores
and Wal-Mart.  Those things are supposed to set off sensors at the exits of
the stores, but people put the "protected" merchandise in aluminum
foil-lined bags to interfere with the signal.

Lauren 

> From: McLauchlan, Kevin

> But as I got near, I realized it was a metal object with a steady red
> LED, dropped in the slush in the other lane of the road - in 
> the middle
> of the lane, such that tire-tracks straddled it and vehicles 
> passed over
> it.
> 
> It was mostly the size and shape of an old-fashioned round combination
> padlock such as you'd use on a locker, but somebody had cut 
> the shackle,
> leaving a stub on one side.
> 
> It definitely wasn't a lock (though it looked like the back of one).
> 
> The body appeared to be metal. 
> 
> The "stub", at close inspection, was an antenna just like on my last
> cellphone.
> 
> The LED was in an armored bump that would have been between 
> the arms of
> the U-shackle if the object had been a padlock.
> 
> No buttons or ports were visible.

> The flat circular part on the back of the object (to my mind, there in
> the dark and the slush) could easily have been the magnet 
> meant to hold
> it to the undercarriage of a vehicle.

>                 /^\
>                 | |
>       ooooo     | |
>       0XXX0     | |
>    0000000000000| |
>  000 ooooooooo 000|
> 000 ooooooooooo 000
> 000 ooooooooooo 000
> 000 ooooooooooo 000
>  000 oooooooooo 000 
>   000 oooooooo 000 
>     000      000
>       00000000