As you're out taking advantage of all the Black Friday specials, the New York Times' resident tech guru, David Pogue, reminds us of the megapixel myth: a high megapixel count doesn't mean a better camera. Pogue had a 13-megapixel photo printed from a professional photo lab at 16x24-inches and then down-rezzed it to 8 and 5 megapixels. He then took all three 16x24-inch prints and had random tourists in NY's Times Square try to spot the difference:

So after taking all 3 prints to NY's tourist mecca, it turns out no one could tell the difference between the 13-, 8-, and 5-megapixel photos. Everyone failed, with the exception of a photo professor who Pogue guesses got lucky. The moral of the story: 1)look at a camera's overall features and not the megapixels before forking over your Visa and 2)tourists in Times Square are Luddites. – Louis Ramirez

The Truth About Digital Cameras [via NYT]