Rachael ray is at the center of a controversy surrounding a scarf. She appeared in a Dunkin' Donuts ad with a scarf that some say it looks like a traditional head dress worn by ...

CANTON, Mass. — Dunkin' Donuts has canceled an online advertisement featuring celebrity chef Rachael Ray after complaints that a scarf she wore in the ad offers symbolic support ...

Dunkin' Donuts, worried that its customers might think so, abruptly yanked an ad in which Ray wears a scarf that resembles a keffiyeh -- a traditional headdress worn by Arab men ...

A scarf worn by foodie Rachel Ray in a photograph to be used for a Dunkin' Donuts ad is at the center of a controversy Wednesday. The Boston Globe reported that the Canton-based ...

Dunkin Donuts Is that a middle-eastern scarf and the Oregon capitol building in the distance in this controversial Dunkin Donuts ad? When conservative bloggers went on the attack ...

BOSTON -- Dunkin’ Donuts abruptly pulled an ad featuring its pitch woman Rachael Ray after a conservative commentator wrote that the scarf Ray wore in the ad looked like a ...

To me the right-wing blogosphere is so filled with venom and nonsense that I simply can't understand it anymore. It's like they live on a different planet. The planet where George ...

Michelle - Be "Keffiya" Startin to Sound Racist by RS Davis The Freedom Files Hello Freedomphiles! Man, I absolutely love Rachel Ray. I think she is about the most adorable girl on ...

Story Updated: May 28, 2008 at 11:55 PM EDT A new on-line ad for Dunkin Donuts featuring Rachel Ray has been pulled from rotation by the company, after a political pundit made ...

McCain‘s “McMortgage” crisis.  Senator McCain‘s foremost economic adviser, now his campaign‘s general co-chair, he‘s likeliest choice for treasury secretary, was still ...

red_dragon writes "An article on The Register tells the news of an announcement of a new 1TB optical drive and disc that will be backwardly compatible with Blu-ray discs. The technology, developed by Call/Recall in partnership with Nichia, uses a rhodamine-type dye in a 200+-layer recording medium that gives off light when excited by a laser beam, along with a single fluid-filled lens to read multiple layers by varying the amount of fluid to change the focal length. The technology is designed to work with Nichia's blue-violet laser diodes, which are already used in Blu-ray drives."

NerdMaster writes "Last week nVidia held their Spring 2008 Editor's day, where they presented their forthcoming series of graphics processing units. While the folks at Hardware Secrets couldn't tell the details of the new chips, they posted some ideas of what nVidia is seeing as the future of computing. Basically more GPGPU usage, with the system CPU losing its importance, and the co-existence of ray-tracing and rasterization on future video cards and games. In other words, the 'can of whoop-ass' nVidia has promised to open on Intel."

FiReaNGeL writes "Astronomers have seen the aftermath of spectacular stellar explosions known as supernovae before, but no one had witnessed a star dying in real time — until now. While looking at another object in the spiral galaxy NGC 2770, using NASA's orbiting Swift telescope, scientists detected an extremely luminous blast of X-rays released by a supernova explosion. They alerted 8 other telescopes to turn their eyes on this first-of-its-kind event. 'We were looking at another, older supernova in the galaxy, when the one now known as SN 2008D went off. We would have missed it if it weren't for Swift's real-time capabilities, wide field of view, and numerous instruments.'" Bad Astronomy has an excellent, well-illustrated story about the discovery as well. I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property contributes a link to the BBC's coverage, and adds a nugget gleaned from Ars Technica: "SN 2007uy's collapse caused an X-ray burst of about 10^39 joules, most likely due to the 'shock break out' when the energy of the core's collapse finally reached the neutron star's surface."

theodp writes "You probably saw media coverage of Bill Gates showing off touch-screen technology to his CEO play group last week. With the introduction of the iPhone and iPod Touch, touch (and multi-touch) technology — which folks like Ray Ozzie enjoyed as undergrads way back in the early '70s — has finally gone mainstream. The only question is: Why did it take four decades for its overnight success? Some suggest the expiration of significant patents filed during '70s and '80s may have had something to do with it — anything else?"

OrochimaruVoldemort writes "Microsoft has said to Engadget that they do not plan on making new consoles available in 2009. This comes from the same company that said it wasn't producing a Blu-ray drive for that Xbox, so it is pure speculation. Expect to see a new console within that year. Engadget also hints: 'Microsoft representative let us know today that "While we don't normally comment on rumors like this, we can tell you that we have no plans to release a new console in 2009."' The rest of us will wait and see. For now, focus on what is available."

esocid writes "WorldWide Telescope, developed by Microsoft's research arm, knits together images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and others. Windows users (only) can browse through the galaxy on their own or take guided tours of different outer-space destinations developed by astronomers and academics. The application allows viewing from different wavelengths such as X-ray, visible light, and hydrogen-alpha radiation. Business Week has a review and some background on the project, which has been in development for years. Google Sky beat them to the punch but Business Week opines that WWT's interface is superior."

theodp writes "Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie are listed as inventors of the Guardian Angel, which is described in a most unusual Microsoft patent application that should intrigue privacy advocates. In addition to protecting you from possibly diseased people, by detecting body temperatures, the Guardian Angel's 'monitoring component can take note of the number of conversations occurring in a room (and more specifically, a breakdown of the types of people in the room accompanied by a warning for dangerous persons, based on sex offender registration, FBI most wanted, etc.).' The versatile Guardian Angel, Microsoft notes, can also recommend restaurants, advise you on the appropriateness of your jokes, detect that your heartbeat has stopped, display targeted ads on billboards, and block spam."

Starturtle writes "Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer had admitted that Microsoft had been working on support for Blu-ray under Windows during this year's Mix08 conference. Rumors began to swirl and many began to expect Microsoft to announce a Blu-ray peripheral for the Xbox 360. However, Microsoft came out and denied all rumors, stating that they were not exploring any kind of Blu-ray add-on or in talks with Sony about integrating Blu-ray into the Xbox experience. After months of rumors and denials, the Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray disc drive is due to be manufactured soon and shipped in Q3 of 2008. Pegatron Technology, an OEM subsidiary of Asustek Computer, is reported to have received the winning order from Microsoft for a Blu-ray equipped Xbox 360."

Vigile writes "Tom Forsyth, a well respected developer inside Intel's Larrabee project, has spoken to dispel rumors that the Larrabee architecture is ignoring rasterization, and in fact claims that the new GPU will perform very well with current DirectX and OpenGL titles. The recent debate between rasterization and ray tracing in the world of PC games has really been culminating around the pending arrival of Intel's discrete Larrabee GPU technology. Game industry luminaries like John Carmack, Tim Sweeney and Cevat Yerli have chimed in on the discussion saying that ray tracing being accepted as the primary rendering method for games is unlikely in the next five years."

esocid writes in with a followup to the recent discussion about the possibility that our galaxy's central black hole could reignite. "Using NASA, Japanese, and European X-ray satellites, a team of Japanese astronomers has discovered that Sagittarius A* let loose a powerful flare three centuries before the time at which we are observing it (i.e., 26,000 years in the past). X-ray pulses emanating from just outside the black hole take 300 years to traverse the distance between the central black hole and a large cloud known as Sagittarius B2, so the cloud responds to events that occurred 300 years earlier. 'By observing how this cloud lit up and faded over 10 years, we could trace back the black hole's activity 300 years ago,' says team member Katsuji Koyama of Kyoto University. 'The black hole was a million times brighter three centuries ago.'"