The Xbox 360 Red Ring Of Death

Some things are easy to see coming if you really pay attention. 

If you know how trains work, you can predict how and where they will run. The nature of train tracks makes this simple to deduce. If you know the laws of physics, then you know that there are not really any situations where you will drop an apple and it will not fall to the ground. No matter where you are on earth when you drop it, except for a direct intervention by God, it will hit the ground eventually. These are simple things, which happen in repeatable patterns that you can simply predict. 

If you know how human manufacturing and new technology works, you know never to trust or rely on the first series of anything. The first series of any new technology hasn't had all the kinks worked out yet. Many of which don't become clear until the product gets into real world use.

Yet, beyond all measurable wisdom, a massive amount of the population have gone and trusted in new and experimental technology and many are now paying the price:   

"An Australian scientist, left unable to work for eight months after a debilitating neurological reaction he blames on the Covid shot, has likened the treatment of people suffering vaccine injuries to that of returning veterans with health issues after the Vietnam War.

Dr Rado Faletic has slammed the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) adverse event reporting process, saying the medicines regulator tasked with vaccine safety surveillance was “simply uninterested” in investigating his symptoms despite submitting multiple reports.

“I’m similar to thousands of Aussies. After the vaccine I had a huge constellation of symptoms from head to toe,” the 46-year-old said, describing it as similar to “mutant long Covid”.

“The worst has been an oppressive brain fog. I’ve had headaches, chest pains, abdominal pains, unbelievable muscle twitching, issues focusing my vision. Basically I’ve been unable to work for eight months. I’m only now just starting to feel a little bit normal. This is not a mild side effect – this has been life-changing.”

Dr Faletic said doctors and specialists were unable to find anything obviously wrong with him.

“You go to the hospital, they take your blood, do an echocardiogram or X-ray or MRI and don’t find anything,” he said. “They say, ‘Well you look fine, go home and rest.’”

He added, “I don’t necessarily blame the doctors. The problem is there hasn’t been a test to find out what’s wrong. I know some people are getting misdiagnosed with anxiety or functional neurological disorder – that’s not what’s going on. It’s a physical injury.”

Dr Faletic, who earned his PhD in hypersonic technology from the ANU and now runs an international research consulting firm based in Canberra, says his faith in the scientific and medical community has been badly shaken by his experience.

He received his first Pfizer dose on October 19 last year and his second on November 9. He had a bad reaction to both “within hours”, but says the second was “dramatically off the charts”.

“I waited a little while [to take the vaccine] – I work with technology and have a science background, so I understood that with a new product, new technology, there could be some things we don’t know about,” he said."

I want to hone in especially on the last part of this guys story because it highlights something important: he knew better. This is an intelligent man, who understands the inherent flaws in new technology, yet he still did something he knew to be risky anyway. "I work with technology and have a science background, so I understood that with a new product, new technology, there could be some things we don’t know about,” he said." He went in with his eyes wide open and yet was still surprised at what happened. 

What gets me about what he says here is that he is right, and yet you don't need to be a technology expert or scientist to understand this. This is simple, plain wisdom. 

Anyone who is aware of the Xbox 360 red ring of death episode knows that very well established and profitable technology companies can still really stuff up with new technology, and these stuff ups can kill their products, and create serious defects. 

The Xbox 360 red ring of death refers to a red light that came up on the front of an Xbox 360 console when the hardware in the system failed. 

What makes this interesting is not that some faulty products died. It is the extent of the failures of these products. In one survey alone 75% percent of respondents said that their Xbox 360's died during the first 18 months. This same article makes sure to note this is not a representative study. It wasn't 75% of all Xbox 360's in existence. However, it is well known that many of these early consoles failed and the Xbox 360 was not really fixed until the Slim models were released, several years later. This cost Microsoft a lot of money, but they promised to fix all the broken consoles and did. 

However, it's one thing to have a gaming device break. It's another thing entirely to have a medicine ruin your body. Hence, a lot of people were rightly hesitant, and in a lot of cases their hesitancy has been vindicated. 

It is sad that people had to learn this the hard way, but society goes through these moments. What we must all do is learn from them and not blindly trust those who ask us to. 

Many people asked me why I didn't want these experimental medications, I told many of them, it was because I knew what happened with the Xbox 360 red ring of death, and countless other first generation technologies and I didn't want that happening in my body. That may have sounded odd to many, but if a technology company can stuff up a home console device, then how much more a mass produced product being quickly rushed to market? A basic understanding of the fallibility of human ingenuity was all that was needed to predict this. Learn from this situation.