That's odd because I once saw a movie discussing the same thing :) (Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels)

What word is that? No one can understand it.

Energon Cubes.

It wouldn't have mattered if you bought one or not yesterday since the Slim PS3s being sold now never had the ability to "Install Other OS". If you saw a stack of Fats then that's a different story.

"I buy warranties on most devices, and always pay for at least $10 of the device using my Visa card as well (even when financed otherwise), so I get the additional 1 year warranty extension from them." Whenever I've had to make a claim on my Visa for extended warranty protection (Harmony remote, laptop, external HDD) they require that you pay in FULL with the credit card. On one item I had used a $25 gift card plus my Visa and they almost didn't cover any of it. I had to prove to them that the $25 card was from Visa reward point redemption. After that they deducted the gift card amount from the total reimbursible expense. I don't see your $10 rule working unless you have a special Visa card that most people don't have access to. I now make a point to not use gift cards for expensive items that may need replaced. Better to use them for consumables or media.

I've used this a few time already on my Visa. It worked out well and it give up to an extra year on a product purchased in full with the card. You submit the receipt, product warranty, and credit card statement show the purchase along with the cost of repair or replacement. They will send you a check for the lesser of either the original purchase price or repair/replacement cost. I've replaced a Harmony 890 remote twice using this warranty, a dead external HDD, and had a laptop repair after its warranty had expired. One thing that I found interesting was that the Circuit City (R.I.P.) Visa card that you used for the not interest purchases was eligible for the warranty coverage. I would turn down their warranty and tell them that I'm already getting an extra year using their card.

You can restore your banned console to its pre-banned state if you are handy with a soldering iron and have an old printer cable. Your console is still banned, but your NAND will be at its prior state so you can transfer saves, install to HDD, and use MCE. Just go to xboxscene.com and read about it.

I just saw an offline game patch collection on Usenet (Newzbin / Console / Xbox 360) that includes most of the patches. You just have to transfer it over with one of those 360 hard drive to PC connection kits at Gamestop.

They offer the $6.99 on some items when ordering next day on a Friday for Saturday delivery. I received Saturday delivery last week using Prime at no charge, but I assume this might have to do with extended hours of FedEx leading into the holidays.

I said that the gamerscore earned "since the ban" is lost. Your gamerscore/gamertag is now frozen at the point of your last Live connection prior to the ban. You can't officially earn any more points until you recover on a legit console. Anything that you do on your banned console is now stuck on your banned console.
Not that this is the end of the world, but it is to some people. If you earn 5,000 GS points since being banned the only way to show it off is to bring your buddies to your house and show them on your banned console. If you try to recover your gamertag from the banned console it will appear corrupt and you'll have to revert to the one saved on Live prior to your ban.

No, I don't see where you are going with that. You can continue to play pirated or legitimate games with a banned 360, but you can no longer use the HDD install feature. IMO, the HDD install is primarily used to silence the jet engine DVD drive. Not a big lose, but just something else to annoy those that got banned. Prior bannings simply kicked your console off of Live.

So disabling Media Center Exender and hard drive game install functionality as well as the ability to transfer game saves from a banned 360 to an unbanned one didn't take anything away? * A recently banned 360 now has its data appear corrupt to non-banned units so you have now lost all game saves and any gamerscore earned since the ban. You also cannot install games to the hard drive or play previously installed games. You can still stream to the 360, but the Media Center Extender is now disabled.