Circuit Breaker - Slashdot User

Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:49PM from the type-A-negative-personality dept.

trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."

Arrington's CrunchPad Dies 175

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday November 30, 2009 @02:08PM from the hooray-for-greed dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Michael Arrington announced the death of the CrunchPad on Monday morning in a blog post heavily spiced with angst and drama. According to Arrington, the Crunchpad, a 12-inch Web tablet expected to be priced at about $300, was just days away from launch. At the last minute, however, Arrington received an email from Chandra Rathakrishnan, the chief executive of manufacturing partner Fusion Garage, apparently trying to cut Arrington out of the product on the eve of the launch. Fusion Garage, according to Arrington, wanted to market the device itself under its own name; which obviously was the deal breaker. Arrington claims that the company had overcome obstacles at every stage in the business such as deals with Intel, retail launch, securing venture capital and angel investments. Interesting bit is that some were already speculating that the Crunchpad was not real."

Comment Re:Any good audio engineer will tell you- (Score 1) 849

by Circuit Breaker on Thursday November 19, 2009 @01:43PM (#30159536) Attached to: Can We Really Tell Lossless From MP3?

No, he's right; There is no absolute or relative "quality" measure to speak of such as you mentioned. While what you say is common knowledge, it has in fact been proven in several rigorous tests that professional wine tasters can usually tell the $2 bottle from the $20 bottle, but not the $20 from the $200 or the $2000 bottle; And in supposedly non-blind tests where they can see the label, they consistently rate the more expensive wine as better -- even when the labels have been swapped and it's on the bottle with the cheaper wine.
See e.g. Mlodinow on wine

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