Orange forced to apologise for 3G outage

Orange has apologised to its customers after many of them took to Twitter to complain about an outage which left them without 3G access.

The telecoms company has blamed the failure on a change it has made to its network and said that only a small number of users were affected.

“We can confirm that our mobile data network is now fully restored. The issue stemmed from a configuration change made earlier this afternoon," a spokesman said.

"Orange customers who had an existing data session did not lose their connection and were able to continue as normal but a small number experienced issues in making new connections. We would like to apologise to customers who have experienced problems with their data services."

Earlier this week Facebook also had to apologise after the site went down across Europe.

The firm blamed the two-hour blackout on "technical problems", but did not provide details.

Third parties suggested a problem with Facebook's European DNS servers may have been at the root. These machines connect the address "Facebook.com" with the actual content of the website, and during the outage attempts to contact to them as normal received no response.

"Today we experienced technical difficulties causing the site to be unavailable for a number of users in Europe," a Facebook spokesman said.

"The issue has been resolved and everyone should now have access to Facebook. We apologize for any inconvenience."

Orange has not supplied any additional detail about what changes it is making to its network – nor did it reveal which locations were specifically hit.

Customers using T-Mobile, which as half of Everything Everywhere, shares its network with Orange (post the merger of the two companies), do not seem to have been affected.

Facebook rolls out 'interest lists'

Facebook has introduced a new tool which allows users to subscribe to 'interests', as well as people's updates, making their news feeds more like 'personalised newspapers'.

Facebook rolls out 'interest lists'. Photo: Alamy

<The new feature means users of the social network can start creating and subscribing to these interest lists – such as recipes or sports teams.

It will roll out to Facebook’s entire 850 million userbase over the next few weeks.

Many technology experts are saying that this Facebook’s latest attempt to usurp Twitter, and create popular topics in real-time, which people can then ‘follow’, in a similar fashion to the microblogging site.

Facebook members will find the ‘interest list’ tab through the home page’s left hand sidebar – and if clicked upon, will reveal a new view entirely comprised of stories from a list's members.

Only a creator of a list can edit it and choose the privacy settings. Users can recommend lists to each other too.

General lists already live include the 2012 Presidential Candidates and several business, style and sports lists – published by Facebook.

Facebook describes the feature as “a new way to keep up with the stuff you care about and tidy up your experience…Interest Lists can help you turn Facebook into your own personalized newspaper”.

This description has led several technology pundits to say the site is also going after personalised social news feed services, such as Flipboard.   

                                                                 By:PC NEWS

Apple iPad still the post-PC flagship

Two years after the launch of the first iPad, even a former Microsoft man says we are in the post-PC world.

"Apple has its feet planted firmly in the post-PC future," Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, told those attending the company's iPad event on Wednesday.

Cook was onstage at the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts in San Francisco to launch Apple's new iPad but he was also there to deliver a declaration of intent. The iPad is the standard bearer for a new class of computer, one that is, in Cook's words "more portable, more personal, and dramatically easier to use than any PC has ever been".

Steve Jobs, Apple's late chief executive, compared PCs to trucks - powerful and multi-purpose - and argued that tablets were like cars - less flexible but better suited to everyday tasks. As America became an urban nation, Jobs said, so cars replaced trucks. Now, almost everyone needs a lightweight computer for everyday tasks; a PC is too much power but a tablet is perfect.

Apple would say that, of course. The company is selling not one but three post-PC devices: the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Those products made up 76 per cent of Apple's revenue last year. In the final quarter of 2011 Apple sold 15.4m iPads, no PC manufacturer sold that many computers in the same period.

Ray Ozzie, formerly chief software architect at Microsoft, agrees with Apple's assessment. He told a conference in Seattle this week: "Of course we are in a post-PC world."

PLEASE POST IN YOUR FB'S WALL

1912–1999

Serbia recaptured Kosovo in 1912 during the Balkan Wars between the Balkan League (Serbia,Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria) against the Ottoman Empire. Serbia lost control of the territory during both of the World Wars. During World War II, Kosovo (except the northern Serbian tip) was given to Albania, which was at that time a colony of Italy. Serbian control was re-established at the end of both wars.

When the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was established after the war, with Serbia as one of its six constituent republics, Kosovo was made an autonomous region of Serbia. The extent of its autonomy varied considerably under the communist Yugoslav system, it expanded its territory in the 1950s, gradually advanced to an autonomous province in the 1960s and since 1971 gained a distinct status of a de facto federal unit, able to veto not only internal Serbian but federal decisions as well. The gradual development of autonomy was instilled by the growth of Albanian nationalism in the province and growing demands for more autonomy and independence, escalating in during the 1960s riots and in 1981.

Western Balkan region in 1942 (during Second World War) compared to 2008

The autonomy of Kosovo was drastically returned to the status predating 1963 in 1989 by the government of President Milošević. Self-government by the province's Albanian majority—now estimated to constitute 90% of Kosovo's population—was ended. In response, the Albanian members of the Kosovo Assembly voted on 2 July 1990 to declare Kosovo an independent state, though this was only recognized by Albania. A state of emergency and harsh new security rules were subsequently imposed by Serbia following mass protests by Kosovo's Albanians. The Albanians established an unofficial "parallel state" to provide education and social services while boycotting or being excluded from Serbian-run government institutions.

Kosovo remained largely peaceful through the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s, although the severity of the Serbian regime in Kosovo was widely criticised by the international community and human rights groups. In 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began attacking Serbian security forces and civilians whom it regarded as "collaborators". The conflict between Serbian and Yugoslav security forces and the KLA insurgents escalated until Kosovo was on the verge of all-out war by the end of 1998. In January 1999, NATO warned that it would intervene militarily if Yugoslavia did not agree to the introduction of an international peacekeeping force and the establishment of a democratic government in Kosovo. Subsequent peace talks failed and from 24 March to 11 June 1999, NATO carried out an extensive bombing campaign against Serbia and Montenegro, including targets in Kosovo itself. The war ended with Milošević agreeing to allow peacekeepers into Kosovo and hand over its governance to the United Nations.

[edit]1999–Present

Further information: Kosovo (UNMIK), Constitutional status of Kosovo, and Kosovo status process

The war ended on 10 June 1999 with the Serbian and Yugoslav governments signing the Kumanovo agreement which agreed to transfer governance of the province to the United Nations. A NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered the province following the Kosovo War, tasked with providing security to the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Before and during the handover of power, an estimated 100,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians, mostly Roma, fled the province for fear of reprisals. In the case of the non-Albanians, the Roma in particular were regarded by many Albanians as having assisted the Serbs during the war. Many left along with the withdrawing Serbian security forces, expressing fears that they would be targeted by returning Albanian refugees and KLA fighters who blamed them for wartime acts of violence. Thousands more were driven out by intimidation, attacks and a wave of crime after the war as KFOR struggled to restore order in the province.

Large numbers of refugees from Kosovo still live in temporary camps and shelters in Serbia proper. In 2002, Serbia and Montenegro reported hosting 277,000 internally displaced people (the vast majority being Serbs and Roma from Kosovo), which included 201,641 persons displaced from Kosovo into Serbia proper, 29,451 displaced from Kosovo into Montenegro, and about 46,000 displaced within Kosovo itself, including 16,000 returning refugees unable to inhabit their original homes.^[6][7] Some sources put the figure far lower. In 2004 the European Stability Initiative estimated the number of displaced people as being only 65,000, with 130,000 Serbs remaining in Kosovo, though this would leave a significant proportion of the pre-1999 ethnic Serb population unaccounted-for. The largest concentration of ethnic Serbs in Kosovo is in the north of the province above the Ibar river, but an estimated two-thirds (75,000) of the Serbian population in Kosovo continue to live in the Albanian-dominated south of the province.^[8]

In 17 March 2004, serious unrest in Kosovo led to 19 deaths, and the destruction of a 35 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries in the province, as Albanians started pogroms against the Serbs. Several thousand more Kosovo Serbs have left their homes to seek refuge in Serbia proper or in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo.

Since the end of the war, Kosovo has been a major source and destination country in the trafficking of women, women forced into prostitution and sexual slavery. The growth in the sex trade industry has been fuelled by NATO forces in Kosovo.^[9][10][11]

A "Young Europeans" billboard in Pristina

International negotiations began in 2006 to determine the final status of Kosovo, as envisaged under UN Security Council Resolution 1244 which ended the Kosovo conflict of 1999. Whilst Serbia's continued sovereignty over Kosovo was recognised by the international community, a clear majority of the province's population sought independence.

The 2008 declaration was a product of failed negotiations concerning the adoption of the Ahtisaari plan, which broke down in the fall of 2007. The plan, prepared by the UN Special Envoy and formerPresident of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, stipulated a sort of supervised independence for Kosovo, without expressly using the word "independence" among its proposals. Under the plan, the Kosovo entity would gain self-governance under the supervision of the European Union, and become obligated to expressly protect its minorities' rights by means of a constitution and a representative government, while this entity would be accorded its own national symbols such as a flag and acoat of arms, and be obligated to carry out border demarcation on the disputed Kosovo-Republic of Macedonia border. The Albanian negotiators supported the Ahtisaari plan essentially in whole, and the plan gained the backing of theEuropean Union and of the United States. However, Serbia and Russia rejected it outright, and no progress was possible on the United Nations front.

Faced with no progress on negotiations in sight, the Kosovars decided to unilaterally proclaim the Republic of Kosovo, obligating themselves in the process to follow the Ahtisaari plan's provisions in full. As of mid-April 2008, this has largely been the case, with the new Republic adopting a constitution written by local and international scholars protecting minority rights and providing for a representative government with guaranteed ethnic representation, which law is to take effect on 15 June 2008. It also adopted some of its national symbols already, including the flag and coat of arms, while work continues on defining the anthem. It has also engaged, albeit with a delay, in the border demarcation talks with Macedonia, initially insisting on being recognized first, but dropping this condition later on.

The 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence elicited mixed reaction internationally and a polarized one domestically, the latter along the division of Kosovo Serbs vs. the Kosovo Albanians. Accordingly, effective control in Kosovo has also fractured along these lines.

HAPPY INDEPEDENCE KOSOVO

The 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence was adopted on 17 February 2008 by individual members of the Assembly of Kosovo acting in personal capacity and not binding to the Assembly itself. These members of the Assembly, acting as "the democratically elected leaders of the people", unanimously declared Kosovo to be independent from Serbia.^[1][2]

It was the second declaration of independence by Kosovo's Albanian-majority political institutions, the first having been proclaimed on 7 September 1990.^[3]

The legality of the declaration, and indeed whether it was an act of the Assembly, was disputed. Serbia sought international validation and support for its stance that the declaration was illegal, and in October 2008 Serbia requested an advisory opinion on the matter from the International Court of Justice.^[4] The Court determined that the declaration of independence was not in violation of international law.^[5]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY REPUBLIC OF KOSOVO

Apple's Tim Cook in line for $378m pay award

Tim Cook, who succeeded Steve Jobs as Apple chief executive in August, is in line for almost $378m (£244.6m) in total compensation for 2011, including $376.2m in share awards.

Apple said his salary would rise to $1.4m in 2012 from $900,000.

Steve Jobs traditionally took an annual salary of $1.

Of the $376m in stock options going to Mr Cook, half will vest in 2016 and the other half in 2021, tying him to the company for another ten years.

At current market value, the shares are worth more than $422m.

Facebook adverts now in news feeds

Facebook adverts, known as ‘sponsored stories’, have started appearing in users' news feeds, as the service ramps up its commercial activity.

Users will now see these adverts, which appear in the form of ‘stories’ or posts about a product, in their news feeds labelled as ‘featured’.

Marketers can only pay for these adverts to appear in a user’s feed if the user has already ‘liked’ the page. And the advertiser does not have the option to add its own additional message once the post is live.

Facebook is rolling the initiative out around the world and it has already started in the UK.

‘Sponsored stories’ have annoyed certain users and Facebook is currently facing a legal challenge by a group of members who are unhappy about their profiles being used in adverts. Currently if a Facebook user clicks the ‘like’ button on a brand’s page on the site, the social network can use the image and name of that person in an advert endorsing the same company.

A US court, which previously refused to progress a case of several disgruntled Facebook members who were angered by this process, overturned its decision last month.