So the Millionaire has spoken! Won 8 Oscars, including:

~ The Best Motion Picture of the Year
~ Best Achievement in Cinematography
~ Best Achievement in Directing
~ Best Achievement in Editing
~ Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score
~ Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song
~ Best Achievement in Sound
~ Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published

in the recent 81st Annual Academy Awards a.k.a the OSCAR. If you haven’t seen it, must be wondering how briliant it is to have such great achievements ? For those who have seen Bollywood movies before, might find this movie totally different from it. I have plenty of thoughts yet I’ll hold it till the comment session, if you wish to talk about it, that is. ^^ In the mean time, enjoy the show!

Synopsis (Spoilers below!)

The show started off with an 18 year old boy by the name of Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), who was tortured and interrogated by the policemen about his shocking ability of reaching the stage which he was only ONE question away to win 20 million rupees on India’s ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’. But, why would they even be suspicious in the first place?? Simply, because he grew up in the slum. No way he could be any smarter, nor educated enough to even get past 1st question! So, he must be cheating!!

No, he did not. As the recording of the Millionaire show was playing, Jamal explained to the inspector, one question to the next, just how they were coincidently interrelated to his life story, the tragic, the misfortunes and how he was desperate to be on the show, just to find the love of his life – Latika.

The story brought us back to about 10 years ago, Jamal and his brother Salim were living in the slum with their mother. Salim was a slick kid, constantly working his ways through the slum by selling, and making deals with whatever merchandise he could get his hands on. In the other hand, Jamal was just being the kid of his age, happy & innocently cheerful. One drastic tragedy took their mother’s life away. Homeless and helpless, the 2 brothers wandered around places, later joined by a little girl, Latika who Jamal invited into the little shelter of theirs on a stormy night.

So the 3 musketeers, together, making their ways through the rubbish dumps, until a local gang brought them to a decent shelter, with the rest of the orphans. They were given good food and asked to sing… unknowingly the gang was on a plot to use them as children beggars. Some were paralyzed and been hurt to gain pity from the public. Salim fought back when the gang leader was about to hurt Jamal, and they escaped by jumping onto a train. Salim abandoned Latika and she ended up recaptured.

The boys came to a new place, where they saw the most enormous building of all – The Taj Mahal. They stayed around that area for quite sometimes with Jamal earned a living by being a tour guide; while his brother, Salim, a gangster. One day, both Jamal and Salim reunited with Latika unexpectedly. The boys decided to save her from the misery before the gang would sell her as a virgin. Salim killed the gang leader and they ran away. Afterwards, Salim joined another gang, and this time he took Latika away himself, leaving the poor Jamal behind.

A few years later, Jamal was working as an office-boy in a phone service company. One day, out of coincidence, he found Salim (Madhur Mittal) while covering a temporary shift for an operator. He punched Salim in the face upon meeting him, angry for his abandonment; while anticipated to see Latika once more. Sadly, Latika (Freida Pinto) was now the mistress of another gang leader, who was treating her like dirt. Jamal determined to run away with Latika and leave this place for good. Everyday, Jamal would wait for Latika as promised at the railway station, until the day she finally came! Their happiness did not last long, as Salim got in their ways and took Latika back to the leader. Again, Jamal was left behind, and Latika was no where to be found.

Jamal was desperate, until he came to his senses that the only way for Latika to find him was through the famous Millionaire T.V. Show. His job at the phone service company earned him a golden opportunity to get on the show. Even the host (Anil Kapoor) underestimated his chance of winning. As the game progressed, out of jealousy, the host even provided him a false answer while in the washroom. Jamal did not buy it which got him to the final question. As the show was over-timed, Jamal could only continue his challenge the next day. The gameshow host called the policemen and reported him cheating on the show, which brought us back to how the story started.

The inspector let Jamal go after confirming he wasn’t lying at all. Jamal went back to the show in time for his final question. As for Latika, she saw Jamal on T.V., so did Salim. This time, Salim finally decided to help Latika escape by giving her the car key and his cellphone. Latika ran far away from the bad guys and safe enough to watch Jamal on the show.

Now the whole nation was grasping and holding their breath, hoping the boy from the slum could win the 20million rupees. The last question, Jamal used the final lifeline, to phone a friend, and he chose to call Salim. Latika picked up in time, and Jamal was relieved to know she was safe, and that was all he needed to hear. What about the final answer? Out of his own instinct, he won the game!!

Jamal and Latika reunited at the railway station, where they supposed to meet. As for Salim, he fought his last battle with the gang and died in the bathtub full of money bills.

There goes the happy ending with the 2 lovers together at last, and danced the night away.

If you’ve watched it, what’s your thought of the show?

Copyright © 2009 by Wong Ching Ya, All Rights Reserved, “Slumdog Millionaire.. Cheat? or Destiny?”

What you shall do if you’re experiencing slow-bandwidth? Here are some solutions you might like to try out:

1) Open as few webpages as possible, preferably 1 .
– multitask?? no, don’t even think about it.

2) Carry out your online chores/surfing during odd hours, say the wee hours, and in the morning when most people are at work / school.
– I do, and most people too, have a job. Shall we stay up from 1am – 5am and sleep during daytime? Try to live the life as a vampire, only you’re a ‘Net’pire instead.

3) Subscribe to another bandwidth service, say 3G? Wimax?
– 3G, tried. Unstable & costly. Wimax? For my area, not until 2010. So..move along..

4) How about Dial-up service?
– ARE YOU KIDDING ME??

5) Compain! Complain! Dial 100 and complain!
– Although mostly you’re going to hear “the indication shows that the line is perfectly normal, most probably is due to your hardware problem..” or “No, here it’s just fine” as long as the DSL light is stable, no, it’s not their problem.

6) Offline. Forget it.
– Best solution. Just wait till the line gets better by itself, and only GOD knows when.

How we able to cope with the IT age if we’re not getting a good bandwidth service?? Let’s not forget, we are paying for the service.

A Nobleprice is on the waiting list for the one who could solve this problem. The whole nation will nominate him/her, you can count on that!

“I wish that this moment in this room, was not me dying but just spending a little time with you…”

Don’t You Know that is STEALING??
Copying somebody’s work, no matter articles or designs from scratch all the way till the end, without asking permission from the author, even named it as your own work? That’s stealing! So what if you changed 1 or 2 words in between? How about the same typo or grammar mistakes that go along with the original? No where to hide now, isn’t it? Putting off with the lame excuses, You know what’s the worst part? The scraper who is making money from all your hard work and takes all the credit for it. Selfish and irresponsible!

That happens. When a blogger friend of mine told me about her experience with content theft, I was so mad on her behalf. She wrote a perfect, informative article, obviously spent quite some times for research and writing, ended up in another weird-looking site. The most annoying thing is the person who did it, put a deaf ear to her plead of taking down her article! What a nuisance, but what to do next??

How You Should Deal With Scrappers?
So when the other day I was browsing through the forum, and I came across a thread regarding this matter, I just can’t hold it anymore. Thanks to Authority blogger forum and some of the experts who shared their ideas and info, I’ve decided to list few of their useful solutions regarding content theft. Perhaps if you have similar experiences in future, do something about it.

1. Email the person and ask him/her to bring down the article immediately before more serious measures would be taken.

2. IF step 1 failed, try to find out his service providers, contact them and ask for their assistance in this matter. (Including hosting provider & advertising partners, such as Google Adsense, Bidvertiser etc.)

**Thanks to tallen42, he provided a link to a list of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) contacts for hosts.

**Also, if you need further updates about content theft or any related matters, kindly visit Plagiarismtoday which was suggested by Sue C.

3. Now the victims could file a notice of infringement with Google using an online form. By doing so, hoping Google could take quick measures into handling & processing your requests. –UPDATED on 15/04/09

**Thanks to Sue C (the PI that we addressed as ‘Scoop Sue’ from now on) for providing this valuable info

Ways To Detect Scrappers??
**Another great tip, if you wish to find out irresponsible scrapers who steal your contents, Jen suggested:

- Check the ‘Uncommon Uses’ under your Feedburner account to find out sites that are showing your feeds.

- Using Copyscape to find duplicates.

- Using Google Blog search to find scraped contents. (Suggested by Rose DesRochers from BloggerTalk)

- Using Google Alert as email updates about the latest, relevant Google results depending on your topic/keyword choice. Configure according to your preference. (Suggested by Kathie M. Thomas) –UPDATED on 15/04/09

Also, thanks to mintblogger who brought up this matter in the forum, and gave us a clear scenario that led to all of the useful ideas above. Congrats to him, as in the end, after all the efforts, he managed to solve this problem with the scraper.

*** Extra Articles I find relevant regarding DMCA issues***

What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content

So that’s just about it. If you’re interested to join in the tag, why not? =) Let your readers know more about you. Enjoy!