It's certainly not the first time we've seen someone open the box to a pricey gadget only to find their hopes and dreams dashed by some unscrupulous individual that's swiped the device and replaced it by something similarly weighted but decidedly cheaper, but it just wouldn't be the holidays if we didn't bring you another account of the same wrong-doings happening again. This latest one comes to us from Thousand Oaks, California where one kid opened the box to the PlayStation 3 he got for Christmas and found a phone book in its place of his desired console. What's more, the PS3 wasn't bought on eBay or out of someone's trunk as you might expect, but at the local EB Games, where the kid's parents are apparently now doing their best to get things sorted out.

[Via Digg]

It looks like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree will be a considerably smaller energy hog this holiday season than it has been in years past, as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced yesterday that the tree will be lit up with LED lights for the first time - 30,000 of 'em, to be specific. That'll apparently reduce the tree's energy consumption from 3,510 kilowatt hours per day to just 1,297 -- a savings that, as the AP points out, is roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity consumed by a typical 2,000-square-foot house in a month. While it's not clear if it'll be used for the tree or not, the owners of Rockefeller Center also took the opportunity to show off a new 365-panel solar array on the roof of one of the complex's buildings, which is apparently big enough to lay claim to the title of the largest privately owned solar roof in Manhattan.

[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]