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Energy Saving Light Bulbs

Compared to general service incandescent lamps giving the same amount of visible light, CFLs use less power and have a longer rated life. In the United States, a CFL has a higher purchase price than an incandescent lamp, but can save over US$40 in electricity costs over the lamp's lifetime. Like all fluorescent lamps, CFLs contain mercury, which complicates their disposal. In the US many home improvement stores accept CFLs for recycling.

A compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), also known as a compact fluorescent light or energy saving light (or less commonly as a compact fluorescent tube), is a type of fluorescent lamp. Many CFLs are designed to replace an incandescent lamp and can fit into most existing light fixtures formerly used for incandescents.

CFLs radiate a different light spectrum from that of incandescent lamps. Improved phosphor formulations have improved the perceived colour of the light emitted by CFLs such that some sources rate the best "soft white" CFLs as subjectively similar in colour to standard incandescent lamps.

More new about plans of microsoft for Xbox cost

Microsoft Plans to Cut Xbox Price to Compete With Wii (Update4)

By Michael White and Dina Bass

The Microsoft Xbox 360 game console

July 11 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, plans to cut the price of its Xbox 360 game console to compete with Nintendo Co.'s top-selling Wii.

Microsoft needs to lower Xbox's prices, ranging from $299 to $479, to increase sales and lure customers who aren't interested in traditional combat and racing video games, Shane Kim, vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, said in an interview. He declined to say when a price cut may be announced. It won't happen at this week's E3 games conference, he said.

``We need to compete effectively for that customer and part of that is getting to the mass market price point for the console,'' said Kim. ``We definitely are working on that area.''

The Xbox 360 has trailed the $249 Wii in sales since Kyoto- based Nintendo introduced the player in November. This week, Sony Corp. lowered the price of the PlayStation 3 console, which has lagged behind both Xbox and Wii, by 17 percent to $499 from $599 in the U.S. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, has vowed to make its video-game business profitable by next year.

``A price cut would give the Xbox 360 an advantage over its rivals, particularly in North America where you have a choice of consoles to play the same game,'' said Etsuko Tamura, an analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities Co. in Tokyo. ``There's a lack of Xbox titles in Japan so a price cut here would have no effect.''

Films Online

In a briefing last night, the company also said Walt Disney Co. will offer films for rent through Microsoft's Xbox Live online service. Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. and Viacom Inc.'s Paramount studio already sell and rent movies on Xbox Live.

The Disney films to be available include ``The Queen,'' ``Bridge to Terabithia'' and ``Déjà vu,'' Microsoft said.

Xbox Live has more than 7 million members, surpassing the company's goal of 6 million members by the start of this year's E3 gathering, Kim said. The company anticipates having 10 million members by this time next year, he said.

Kim made the comments yesterday as Microsoft prepared for the opening of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, in Santa Monica, California, where console makers and game publishers announce new products for the coming year.

Microsoft shares rose 16 cents to $29.49 as of 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading and have fallen 1.2 percent this year.

Looking at Pricing

In fiscal 2006, the games unit lost $1.26 billion on sales of $4.26 billion. David Hufford, a director of Xbox product management, said last month a price cut was needed to convince parents to buy the machine for their children.

``The timing depends on a lot of different factors and we'll just keep evaluating those,'' Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division President Robbie Bach said in an interview today.

Versions of the Xbox 360 sell for $299, $399 and $479 in the U.S. Wii has the lowest price among the latest generation of consoles. Analysts such as Heather Bellini at UBS AG and Sarah Friar at Goldman, Sachs & Co. have said they expect Microsoft to cut its price at some point before the holiday season.

``It's a sliding scale,'' said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, in an interview from the E3 conference today. ``The better they do with pricing, the more they're going to get demand.''

In announcing Tokyo-based Sony's price cut, Jack Tretton, president of the company's U.S. video-game business, said he expected the move to double console sales. U.S. consumers have purchased 1.38 million PlayStation 3s since its introduction in November. That compares with 2.84 million Wii players, which went on sale the same month.

Xbox Sales

Microsoft has sold 5.5 million Xbox 360s in the U.S. since the console reached stores in November 2005, according to Port Washington, New York-based NPD Group Inc., which tracks sales.

Kim said in yesterday's interview that Microsoft ``feels very good with where we are at right now,'' and doesn't feel compelled to respond to Sony's price cut.

The company sold 11.6 million Xbox units in the year ended June 30, missing a forecast for 12 million. Microsoft said last night it will introduce the top-end Xbox Elite in Europe in August and a special edition ``Halo 3'' console in September.

For the time being, the company will rely on new games to boost console sales. They include ``Rock Band,'' which allows players in different locations to connect online and play guitars and drums along with recordings of rock 'n' roll hits. The game is being developed by Electronic Arts Inc. and Viacom Inc.'s Harmonix studio in time for the holidays.

Microsoft also announced that Osaka, Japan-based Capcom Co. is developing a version of its ``Resident Evil'' action game for the Xbox 360, a move that may help bolster console sales in Japan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael White in Los Angeles at
mwhite8@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: July 11, 2007 16:14 EDT

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IE 7 Less Vulnerable than Firefox 2?

According to reports, Mozilla Firefox 2 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE) are both vulnerable to a bug that steals the login-id and password of users, with the help of a fake log-in page.

The bug has been dubbed as "Reverse Cross Site Request vulnerability" (RCSR) by Robert Chapin, who first discovered the flaw.

Reportedly, the attack was first carried out from a profile page using a specially crafted HTML that hides the genuine MySpace content from the page, and displays the fake login page instead. The fake page is then sent to another Web site, along with information regarding MySpace users who visited the page using Firefox.

The attacks seen on My Space.com are likely to move on to Firefox as well because the Firefox Password Manager automatically enters any saved passwords and user-id/s into the form, whereas IE is not capable of filling in the saved information automatically.

Therefore, Firefox is more likely to get affected by the flaw, as compared to IE.

According to Chapin, users of both Firefox and IE need to be aware that their information can be stolen in this way when visiting blog and forum Web sites at trusted addresses as well. Further, an RCSR attack is more likely to succeed than an XSS attack because neither IE nor Firefox are designed to check the destination of form data before the user submits them.

Moreover, the browser doesn't indicate the exploitation as it is conducted on a trusted Web site.

As of now, no fix has been issued by Mozilla, and it's not very clear if the other versions of Firefox are also affected by the flaw. Users have been advised to disable the "Remember passwords for sites" from the preference link in Firefox.

Additionally, these attacks could also be highly effective against firewall of local network servers and HTTPS addresses that are not otherwise accessible because the attacker does not need direct access.

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Will PlayStation 3 be the new Betamax?

Will PlayStation 3 be the new Betamax?
Sony's Blu-ray technology is hot stuff. But, as it found out back in the 1980s, technical superiority doesn't always guarantee success
By Tim Webb
Published: 26 November 2006

It is the most eagerly awaited gadget of recent years. Sony's futuristic PlayStation 3 games console is already selling by the planeload in the US and Japan, following its launch earlier this month, and is expected to do well in the UK when it appears in Europe this spring.

But while retailers and consumers can't get enough of the sleek $500 (£260) black machines, Sony is suffering a huge financial loss. Analysts believe the company will lose £1.7bn on its PS3 business over the next two years.

The launch in the US and Japan will barely make a dent in these losses. Analysts predict that, partly because of manufacturing difficulties, only 750,000 consoles will have been sold in the US by the end of the year, despite Sony chartering planes to airlift new orders in from Asia. To rub it in, its arch-rival Nintendo launched its own console this month in the US, the Wii. Analysts at Lazard Capital Markets estimate that Nintendo could ship up to 200,000 of these consoles every week until the end of the year, the most important period for retailers.

Sony is taking a gamble that its investment in PS3 and the step change in technology that it represents will pay off. In particular, it hopes that by incorporating Blu-ray technology - which allows the console to double up and play high-definition DVDs - it has backed a winner.

Research by Thomson Scientific for The Independent on Sunday shows that developing, assembling and transporting the console to the shops has been a huge global undertaking, involving dozens of component suppliers and partners, mainly in Japan and the US.

Some say that the scale of its ambition could prove to be Sony's downfall. As analysts like to point out, the video battle of the Eighties - VHS vs Betamax (championed by none other than Sony) - shows that picking a winner is not always straightforward. Betamax was technically superior, yet lost out to VHS and so became obsolete. So has Sony bitten off more than it can chew?

As the name suggests, the PS3 is the third in the PlayStation series and competes against Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's new Wii. The top-of-the-range PS3 model, which comes with a 60GB hard drive, is 40 times more powerful than the PS2, allowing it to play ever more data-intensive games. Its Blu-ray technology offers higher resolution than any other technology, including the rival HD television platform promoted by Microsoft and Toshiba. For owners of high-definition televisions, this enhances the picture for games, as well as for movies, because the console - like the Xbox 360 and Wii - also doubles up as a DVD player. But DVDs made for HD TV are not compatible with Blu-ray, and vice versa. At the moment, most film studios produce two versions of DVD, which are compatible with the competing technologies. But this is unlikely to continue indefinitely and Sony hopes that - unlike Betamax - it is Blu-ray that emerges as the triumphant format.

Sony is taking a different approach to Microsoft, whose Xbox 360 does not come with a built-in high-definition disc-playing capability (an external add-on HD DVD drive has just been introduced). Because high definition television has yet to take off, in the short term most buyers of PS3 will not see the full benefits of Blu-ray. But Sony is taking the long-term gamble that incorporating Blu-ray into PS3 will give the technology a head start. As Paul Jackson, of Forrester Research, says: "Sony is playing a long-term game for consumers' living rooms and future entertainment beyond gaming."

The incorporation of Blu-ray has held back the roll-out of PS3. For example, problems with the Blu-ray laser diodes have restricted production. Mr Jackson adds: "Sony is pushing the envelope of innovation here. In terms of production it has made a rod for its own back. The newness of the technology makes the console expensive to assemble and means that components are in short supply."

In comparison, the components in the less innovative Xbox 360 are much simpler to find, even though Sony has been trying to reduce the amount of component suppliers used and centralise operations.

Some critics have questioned whether Blu-ray is necessary. They say that having a dual role for the PS3 is holding Sony back.

But Phil Harrison, president of Worldwide Studios at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, defends its inclusion: "Including Blu-ray is an indication of our determination to make PS3 future proof. We need Blu-ray as game designers to feed the hunger of PS3's powerful Cell and RSX processors [the graphic chip of the PS3]. Adding support for Blu-ray movie discs makes it even more attractive to consumers."

If initial sales are anything to go by, the PS3 is a big hit. Demand has been so high that more than one in 10 consoles have been resold on the auction website eBay for three times as much as the price in the shops. In Japan, some intrepid gamers queued for days to make sure they got their hands on the prized console. When it launched in the US, one man was shot by robbers as he queued up outside a Wal-Mart store in Connecticut at 3am.

The biggest headache for Sony is meeting this demand. "There are going to be some frustrated consumers and we are very sorry about that," Mr Harrison says. Keen not to raise expectations, he is reluctant to be drawn on when production will meet this demand. "We are confident of being able to more closely align supply with demand for the European launch next year."

Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets, says the delayed launch of PS3 puts Sony further behind the Xbox 360, but the battle will not be won or lost in one year. "It's important to remember this is a cyclical business with a five- to 10-year product cycle," he says.

Mr Harrison is bullish about PS3's prospects, despite all the problems. " If we can continue the trend we saw with PS1 and PS2, where both systems sold in excess of 100 million machines and expanded the market for games, I can't see why we can't get an installed base of over 100 million PS3s."

But with shareholders jittery about the financial impact on Sony of PS3, and with previous targets not met, he adds quickly: "But that's not a forecast."

Patents: Battle of the tech-heads as Microsoft takes on Asia

Not only is Europe last in line when it comes to the launch of the PlayStation 3 (PS3), but it lags behind the US and Japan in terms of developing new technologies that go into such complex gadgets.

Data compiled for The Independent on Sunday by Thomson Scientific shows that the console's new components were mostly patented in Japan and the US. The UK patented under 1 per cent of the 1,138 components that go into the PS3.

Where a technology is patented is a good indication of where it was developed. Stephen Trotter, senior patent analyst at Thomson Scientific, explains that one reason Japan and the US dominate is because they represent the world's largest consumer electronics markets. Patenting and producing components close to the target market makes sense.

The US has played an ever more important role in driving new video games in the past five years, mainly because Microsoft, under its chief executive Steve Ballmer, has moved into this market. Some 600 new games-related inventions were filed in the US in 2005, up by more than 200 per cent since 2000. The US is thus closing the gap on Asia, where 900 inventions in this field were patented in 2005. Both are streets ahead of Europe, with just 86 patents filed in 2005.

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