30th December 2012 Archive

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• The 'Digital Economy' in 2012: A big noisy hole where money should be

  No free lunches here - unless you're Zuck or Google

  Thank the Zuck! We should all remember Mark Zuckerberg as we sing Auld Lang Syne this year. Facebook's photographic landgrab via its freshly acquired Instagram service has helped put some vital perspective onto 2012 - bringing home issues that were abstract or buried by political posturing. What Facebook is doing is merely …

  Policy 30 Dec 08:09

• Chinese court orders Apple to cough £100k to writers for violating copyright

  Fruity tech maker comes a cropper in China

  Apple got a nasty post-Christmas present in China on Thursday when a Beijing court hit it with a 1.03m yuan (£102,000) fine after ruling the fruity tech titan was responsible for applications which appeared on its App Store containing unlicensed content. The Beijing No 2 Intermediate People's Court concluded that Apple had …

  Law 30 Dec 09:02

• The year GNOMES, Ubuntu sufferers forked off to Mint Linux

  Linux in 2012 It is only wafer-thin, and no cheque required

  It's been a rough year for Linux on the desktop. More specifically, it's been a rough year for GNOME-based Linux on the desktop. But a glimmer of hope may have appeared thanks to a Mint-flavoured distribution of the open-source operating system. KDE, XFCE and other desktop interfaces soldiered on in 2012 in their stolid ways, …

  Software 30 Dec 10:10

• Boffins use laser to move maglev disk

  Not as fast as a Japanese train

  Readers may wish to skip to the video, below, if they’re too holidayed to want to read too many words. For the rest: a group of Aoyama Gakuin University researchers has demonstrated a magnetic-levitation disk that can be moved using lasers. The trick is in the materials: when the laser heats one part of the disk, the magnetic …

  Science 30 Dec 20:52

• From post-coital squid to high-res Playboy bunnies: The 2012 'IT angle?!' quiz

  Test your knowledge of the year's most stimulating stories

  How much do you remember about what really mattered in 2012? You're about to find out. Last year The Reg chronicled more than just the birth of Windows 8, the rise of ARM, the battle between iOS and Android, the genesis of the buzzword de l'année "big data", Apple's crap Maps app flap, and other communiqués from the front …

  Bootnotes 30 Dec 21:26