Two 'lil 360 bits that fall on far opposite ends of the 360 user spectrum. Firstly, though Xbox Live had begun banning consoles with modded firmware, the evolutionary relationship between developers and hackers has taken the logical next step with the hackers have released new firmware that bypasses the ban checks. Neener.

Interestingly, the perplexing prevalence issue surrounding the red ring of death (as in, we still don't know how common it is, though failure seems almost guaranteed) took a step towards achieving some clarity, though the picture looks as grim as I suspected (everyone I know with a 360 has had it fail at least once...). The folks over at Joystiq have noted that shockingly, Microsoft is extremely low on Xbox 360 "coffin" mailers, which means either the nation's strategic cardboard reserves are depleted, or they're breaking consoles faster than they can fix them and keep their repair service running. Ulp.