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Showing posts from 2009

World's most innovative school - Royal College

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Planning and implementing is two different fields that has to be molded separately. But there are living things who do these with great sense of achievement . Founded in 1835, The Royal College has been an educational institute that has been carrying knowledge from various cultures, religions and people. It is this, so called unity that had placed Royal College ahead of the rest! Sri Lanka's premier public school Royal College was selected as one of the best innovative schools in the world by Microsoft. This can be described as an achievement not by the school itself but an achievement for the whole nation. It is also significant that this happened in 2009, the year of ICT and English as declared by the Government of Sri Lanka. A local competition was organized by Microsoft Sri Lanka in co-ordination with the Education Ministry to select five most innovative schools in the country. Royal College along with four schools other were selected to represent Sri Lanka in the global co...

Windows 7 multitouch: it's a gimmick (for now)

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It is said that the microsoft's developers have spent some time with Windows 7 Beta 's new touch and multitouch features this week, and came away largely disappointed. According to them, It was not that they didn't work, at least on occasion, it was that they didn't really provide a comprehensive or pleasurable method for using a computer. The primary enhancements to the OS that really made touch usage possible include a taller taskbar, pinch to zoom and tap-and-drag scrolling. There was a fancy new onscreen keyboard that's actually usable, and those quick-swipe gestures from Vista remain for forward, back, copy, paste, undo and redo. It sounds like a lot,ya true that what happened exactly when MS made the fuss about Vista! Interactions are inconsistent from program to program, including Microsoft applications, gestures seem to work when you don't want them, and don't work when you need them, and at least 50 percent of the OS is still too small to use with t...

The Colombo barriers

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PUBLIC SECURITY: The Sri Lanka Army celebrated its 60th anniversary on the 2nd of October. The victory of defeating the world's deadliest terrorist organisation was then being celebrated on par with an exhibition and a display of armory at the BMICH. I was driving down the Bauddaloka Mawatha to drop my little cousin brother to school. We were suddenly stopped by a posh policeman who was wearing shades at 7 a.m, facing the opposite direction where sun was shinning from. It was a temporary check point that had been set up by police to check the civilians who were to enter the vicinity of the BMICH. The exhibition had the fullest protection. As I stopped the vehicle one policeman came infront of the car having his AK47 on his hands while one came to check my ID card. Two other policemen were on the otherside of the car and when i was about to hand over the ID to the above policeman, one of the two of the side where my bro was sitting told us to move on as there is a school child. Out ...

Kissing in private and making it public

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It has been tragic and even awful to hear these kind of stories. Besides anyone can question what is wrong with our people. Some weeks ago all the porn sites that could be viewed by the Sri Lankan internet users were banned or blocked in simple terms. To gain any political advantage or not, it happened in that way. The worry was uploading and sharing pictures and videos of Sri Lankan girls, with or without their consent. A newspaper journalist attached to a weekend Sinhala newspaper came up with this issue first! Why?, Why? & Why? someone would do something "kunu" in this manner? That's what came into my mind at a glance. It is a proven fact that "porn" is a money making industry in the US and some other Asian countries such as China and Japan. Knowing these, were our people trying to mark up to the level of the world's largest debtor's status? The problem in Sri Lankans as I see when it comes to nudity and pornography. They were and are not given p...

Royal grabs Hayman's trophy!

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SPORTS: Water Polo; Royal College gave no chance to the Thomains for any fight back as the Royal team started Scoring from the very 2nd minute of the game. Royal Scoring in every opportunity they got Trashed the Thomains to win the 2nd leg 7-4 and 15-11 on Aggregate. Royal Led by Yahan Samarajeewa kept their promice and now Royal has won 5 back to back hayman and making 10-0 in terms on wins in legs! Royal's most powerful threat to the Thomains, Royal Vice Captain poorna Kankanige walked away with the 'MOST VALUABLE PLAYER' award. Wishes to the Team Royal on behalf of every Royalist! FLOREAT Well well well, have you ever heard of any "power play" in Water Polo? Ya I know what you're thinking, but its real! Introduced first at this year's Hayman's trophy and only being carried out by the tw...

Four ways to keep what you study in your head

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EDUCATION : STUDYING TIPS; Ever worry about those tests that require so much space in your memory? Do you worry about those subjects that have teachers who give the objective type of tests? Well, we cannot have ways to change these kinds of tests. But one could devise ways to ace these kinds of exams. You might envy people who remember lots of things. You can have two persons who study the same subject, same number of pages, same number of hours, but when the results of the test comes, one gets a way higher grade than the other. Here are ways to improve your memory. These are sure to be of use to you and to others. a) This may be tiring, but give more time to your reading rather than plain cramming. If you give more time to reading the subject matter of the upcoming examination, you are sure to store more knowledge into your brain compared to just studying a night before or an hour before an exam. If you are not the type of person who easily uncovers the stored memory from the tea...

Michael Jackson's glove auctioned in Australia

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ENTERTAINMENT : Australia; A bejeweled white glove Michael Jackson tossed to an Australian fan more than a decade ago sold at auction Sunday for 57,600 Australian dollars ($48,400), almost twice the estimated selling price. Warwick Stone, a buyer for the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas , beat out five other bidders for the late King of Pop 's glove, said Charlotte Stanes, spokeswoman for the Melbourne auction house Bonhams and Goodman. The estimated selling price before the auction was AU$30,000. "We are very happy with the result," Stanes said. "It's the first glove we know about in Australia . " Bonhams and Goodman said it was the first auction of a Michael Jackson glove since his death on June 25 this year at age 50. Jackson visited Australia in 1996 as part of his HIStory world tour . While in Sydney , he attended the Australian premiere for the film "Ghosts," in which he had a starring role. At the end of the screening, he tossed t...

eBay reaches deal to sell Skype

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Online auction site eBay has agreed to sell the majority of internet phone company Skype for about $2bn (£1.2bn). Skype is to be majority-owned by a group of private investors, including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and private equity firms. EBay will keep a 35% stake in the firm, which it has been trying to sell for some time. It has said that Skype had "limited synergies" with it. The deal values Skype at $2.75bn. EBay bought Skype for $2.6bn in 2005. The new owners are Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures - which originally invested in Skype - as well as private equity firm Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. They will pay $1.9bn in cash, and give a $125m note to eBay, meaning that it promises to pay that amount on demand or at an agreed time. For sale Earlier this year, eBay had said that it planned to spin off Skype and list its shares in the first half of 2010, an announcement many took as a signal that the firm was for sale. Ebay wrote down ...