h a l f b a k e r yI like this idea, only I think it should be run by the government.
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The Postal Trojan is deployed at any
post-office and addressed to a friendly
address. It is largely filled with sand,
for reasons that will become apparent
later.
After deployment, the robot waits for
all human postal staff to go home.
Then, it sprouts arms and legs, and goes
looking
for items of interest from
within the sorting office.
If something interesting is discovered,
an orifice opens in the heavy-brown
packing paper, and the item of interest
is subsumed, weighed internally and an
equal weight of sand is ejected to
ensure an equal weight and avoid
overweight postal charges. Once the
operation is complete, the orifice
closes, and the parcel appears as
before.
The operating mechanism might be
remotely controlled, or by automation -
either way, this might be an alternative
way to gather presents for Christmas
this year!
<Distant sound of automated hand-dryer>
[link]
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Very clever, although I forsee an arms race of
ever-larger postal trojan robots. Your local postal sorting office will look like a sort of nightmare futuristic Transformer Wars scenario. [+] |
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Does this leave a pile of sand on the floor, or does it repackage the sand to be sent to the original address? Perhaps it could use coal instead. |
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Is this device remote controlled, semi-autonomous, or fully autonomous ? |
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Water would be the best ballast, as it's cheap, readily available, fairly untraceable, and can be disposed of as a fine spray over a large area and will evaporate without leaving much of a trace. |
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It might be simpler if the Postal Trojan Robot poured
its sand into various pieces of mail/parcel-handling
machinery. |
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An expensive and complicated mechanism that
comes with the risk of going to federal prison for the
opportunity to steal some small items like books and
DVDs from the Post Office. [+] |
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Don't use Indiana Jones, he always gets the ballast weight wrong. |
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Lovely. Easily defeated by leaving a camera in the sorting room, but lovely. [+] |
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//Easily defeated by leaving a camera |
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Und zo, Zer first target is the camera, the lens rapidly abraded by sandblaster. |
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