A computer that sits comfortably, coolly on your lap. The world s largest chipmaker expects a crush of ultrathin laptops from PC makers in 2009 and unveiled cooling technology this week to make sure these svelte air-flow constrained designs stay cool.

To date, cooling technology has focused on keeping the internal components from getting too hot but not the outside of the computer, according to Mooly Eden, general manager of Intel s Mobile Platforms Group, speaking at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei this week. Eden s keynote was streamed from the event.
Intel uses laminar jet technology to cool a laptop s skin.

When you design a very thin system, cooling the skin is a very big challenge, said Eden. If you put a laptop on your lap, it can feel very uncomfortable. Very hot. This is one of the biggest hurdles to designing an ultrathin laptop like the MacBook Air or HP Voodoo Envy 133.

If this problem isn’t solved, laptops can t be made thinner and thinner, he said.

Eden showed an animation of a jet engine to prove his point. The inside of a jet engine can get as hot as 1,000 degrees centigrade. But the jet engine s wall must be kept cool because it is connected to the wing where the fuel is. To keep the engine heat away from the wing, laminar air flow cooling is used.

A laminar flow occurs when a fluid–or air in this case–flows in parallel layers.

Intel demonstrated a system using the same laminar air flow technology to move the heat off a laptop s skin. We are licensing it to our customers so they can keep making thinner and thinner laptops, Eden said.

On Thursday, Microsoft issued a rare out-of-cycle patch for a vulnerability in the Windows Server service that handles remote procedure calls (RPC) that allows programmers to run code either locally or remotely. In issuing MS08-067, Microsoft warns “it is possible that this vulnerability could be used in the crafting of a wormable exploit.” Entitled “Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (958644)” the specific vulnerability has been assigned a National Vulnerability Database designation of CVE-2008-4250.

Microsoft rates this patch as critical for Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and important for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It also affects versions of Windows 7 pre-beta in limited release. The patch replaces MS06-040.

Insanity knows no limits. Neither, it seems, do the feelings of a hurt eBay seller.

Chris Read, a 42-year-old English chap, bought a Samsung 700V phone from Joel Jones on eBay.

“I was told the phone was in good condition, but there were scratches all over it, a big chip out of the side and it was a different phone. I paid for a Samsung F700 and got a Samsung F700V,” Read told the Daily Telegraph.

He returned the phone and got a full refund, but, thinking he might help other less-than-witting purchasers, he left a comment on eBay’s feedback link.

Please read how willfully nasty were Read’s words: “Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised on Mr Jones’ eBay account.” Um, and that appears to have been it.

Jones, on reading this deep indictment of his exemplary business practices sent an e-mail to Read, threatening to sue for libel. The gist of his e-mail seems to have been that Read’s highly emotional invective had adversely affected his business.

The fake story submitted to CNN’s iReport site that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack was the work of an 18-year-old, according to a report.

Bloomberg is reporting that investigators have determined that the teenager planted the story on CNN’s user-generated news site. But they have found no evidence that the suspect attempted to profit from the sharp drop in Apple’s stock that occurred after Silicon Alley Insider picked up the CNN posting and published it before verifying whether it was true. The suspect was not named, but the Securities and Exchange Commission has been trying to determine if the story was planted with the idea of making money in the stock market, which would be a crime.