Fixing The 3 Ring of Death With Towels?

The other day I watching some videos on youtube, and landed on a video where a boy was covering a towels over his Xbox 360 to get rid of the 3 ring of death. It seemed to work, but I thought to myself, "Wouldn't that just make your 360 overheat and really mess it up?" I thought the whole idea of having it stand up and vents inside the system was to prevent overheating.


Fortunately, I haven't had the 3 rings of death yet, so I don't know if that putting towels on your Xbox would really help. I've also heard that unplugging all the connections to your Xbox and then reconnecting them would work. Do these methods fix the problem permanently, or just fix it temporary? What's your thoughts on this.