Frankie has posted at Bungie.net that Best Buy may be your best friend come Halo 3's launch day:

During the launch period of Halo 3, the 25th, 26th and 27th of September, Best Buy will be sponsoring the Xbox Live Gold service and making it free for everyone. Think of it as Halo Free Gold Days. That means that even if you only have Xbox Live Silver, or you picked up a 360 just for Halo 3, that you’ll be able to try almost all of the features – online co-op, Multiplayer, Forge editing, viewing networked Saved Films - however, you will not be able to use our File Share system unless you subscribe to the paid Xbox Live Gold service.

Interesting restriction. Looks like nobody wants a lack of a Gold subscription to get in the way of Halo 3's online multiplayer numbers.

While many Halo fans are trying to keep themselves off the Internet to avoid spoilers, I've had trouble getting on it-- the new DSL line is installed, but not yet working, and the old line decided to go on vacation for the past 24 hours. With that in mind, here's a summary of the news in that time:

• Zanzibar played multiplayer Halo 3 at the Pontiac "First to Play" event and wrote up his impressions at Evil Avatar.
• The live-action Halo 3 commercial Museum is out on Xbox.com and is drawing praise from most quarters and scorn from others; the latter I'd not have mentioned were it not for Anton P. Nym's scathing rejoinder. You can get the video on XBLM as well.
• Free Halo 3 Gamerpics and Theme are available in Xbox Live Marketplace.
• Retronauts finished off its contribution to 1Up's three-week Halo 3 coverage by looking back at Marathon Infinity.
• 1Up loves twice as many things about Halo 3 as it hates. Even those things it hates aren't really that hateful.
• HBO confirms that Halo 3 has leaked, and that it is shutting down its forum until after the official release day.
• 1Up put up a passel of new screenshots; they've been added, as appropriate, to the main Halo 3 (campaign) and Multiplayer Halo 3 galleries.