As part of the launch of the service, Microsoft are offering some exclusive footage from Avatar to download (or stream) for free up until Saturday. Of course, free is a subjective term here, as it doesn’t count your bandwidth.

The footage wasn’t up when I left for work this morning, but If you have a fetish for blue people, it should go live at some point today.

[Zune Marketplace on Giz]

First you’ll need to get iXtreme LT, which’ll attempt to return your console to a playable state. The catch is that you need to know your CPU code and that the instructions rely on a lot of different (free) tools.

Has anyone used this or another workaround to get their Xbox playing again? [DailyTech via Crunchgear]

That’s a fucking absurd number. You could almost wire your house with Ethernet cable for that amount. In fact, I’ll probably do that rather than pay $150.

Don’t get me wrong – I love my Xbox… It still hasn’t red ringed, and there are some great games out now and on the way. But $150 for wireless – that should be included with the hardware – is just absurd… Although it always has been – the current G adaptor costs the same amount…

[Microsoft]

[Gamecard via Ecogamer via Kotaku]

[Xbox]

The new sticker, found under the faceplate (just like the old one), looks a bit bigger and features both a code and a mysterious black bar.

Maxconsole forum members already came up with some interesting/believable theories: Could this code be tracked to your serial number, in case you open the machine and want to seal it back up with a fraudulent sticker? Could this black bar be heat-sensitive tape that would change colour should you try the classic hot box trick to repair an RRoD? Could this sticker contain a tiny capsule of cyanide meant to crack under duress, eradicating the modding community one lonely guy at a time?

We don’t know. But what seems obvious is that Microsoft is taking their warranty stickers a bit more seriously.

For reference, here’s what the old sticker looked like:
Go nuts with accusations in the comments while we wait for Microsoft to give us an official answer. [Logic-Sunrise via Maxconsole]

On Adium, the AIM client I use, I put in aliases for everyone on my buddy list. How the hell am I supposed to remember everybody’s ancient screennames that are references to something obscure from high school? Instead, they come up as, you know, their names.

On Xbox Live, I have literally no idea who some of my friends are. I have vague guesses based on their avatars, and I knew who they were when I added them, but everybody has such goddamned goofy usernames, it’s impossible to keep track of them all.

Wouldn’t it be easy to allow people to enter their real names as well and then give users a choice about which to display — the handle or the real name? Or allow people to create custom aliases for each person on their friends list? Because not knowing who your friends are kind of defeats the purpose of having a friends list in the first place, doesn’t it?

There’s no word on exactly what games are included, other than the fact that they’re “premium” games, but from the image it looks like Halo: ODST and Kameo are included. As for which TVs are eligible, you can get the LC40LE700X, LC40LB700X, LC42D77X, LC46D77X, LC52D77X, or LC65RX1X. Catchy names, huh?

For more info, head on over to Sharp’s promo page. The deal’s running until December 31.

[Sharp – Thanks Luke!]