High School Dropout, Self-Taught Chip Designer 816
circletimessquare writes "The QVC television shopping network has recently found a hit in its product the C64, which emulates the classic Commodore 64 in a small form factor, a joystick. But the story of the designer of the product is more interesting than the product. Meet Jeri Ellsworth [NYTimes. You know what that means], whose life story emulates the golden age of garage-based computer design. She is proof that the passion of the homebrew electronic hobbyist is still a viable force in an age when well-funded and well-staffed corporate design teams dominate chip design."
No Reg Required... (Score:5, Informative)
Reg Free Link [nytimes.com]
Re:No Reg Required... (Score:3, Informative)
bugmenot [bugmenot.com]
Even has extensions for firefox and ie. I'm sure most of you already know about it, but in case you didn't, here it is.
Re:No Reg Required... (Score:5, Funny)
Even if she wasn't a 30 yr old high school dropout self-taught chip designer and was just a normal person I'd still consider her cute.
Re:No Reg Required... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No Reg Required... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No Reg Required... (Score:3, Funny)
I'll bet she even does wire-wrap.
Yes but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes but... (Score:4, Funny)
even more remarkable is that this is prolly the only article in
Re:Yes but... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sure the small print says "Jeri not included".
Re:Yes but... (Score:2)
See for yourself [nytimes.com].
-Jem
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes but... (Score:2)
Interesting:
She gains geek cred for owning an old pinball machine
She loses it for having a Compaq laptop
Re:Yes but... (Score:3, Insightful)
And since everyone's giving an opinion on this; I give her a 6.5.
Well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes but... (Score:4, Funny)
6 beers.
Re:Yes but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Funny)
She's female and she knows VHDL. That makes her pretty hot as far as I'm concerned.
Sexism (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm halfway through the responses and haven't yet encountered a single comment about the greatness of this project!
/. disappoints once again.
Re:Sexism (Score:3, Funny)
So, is the project HOT?
Re:Yes but... (Score:3, Informative)
text! (Score:2, Informative)
YAMHILL, Ore. - There is a story behind every electronic gadget sold on the QVC shopping channel. This one leads to a ramshackle farmhouse in rural Oregon, which is the home and circuit design lab of Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer.
Ms. Ellsworth has squeezed the entire circuitry of a two-decade-old Commodore 64 home computer onto a single chip, which she has tucked neatly into a joystick that connects by a cable to a TV set. Called the Commodo
don't mod up :( (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
Forgot one key to success (Score:4, Insightful)
You forgot well-lawyered, for when an uppity innovator dares challenge the corporate status quo. Sadly, all it would take is one lawsuit (ore even the threat thereof) to shut her down.
Re:Forgot one key to success (Score:5, Interesting)
She's doing the design as a contractor.
It's the companies who are making and selling them that will have to take the big risk of lawsuit. By legal standards, she's just a hired gun.
Beware the sig (Score:3, Informative)
-- Just like it happened to this poor sap [tinyurl.com].
Beware the sig in the parent post. The link is not work-safe, and the context makes it look like it's relevant to the discussion:
Bzzzt...wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Commodore isn't exactly the big juggernaut it was 20 years ago...I'd venture to say that the owner of the brand is not exactly "well lawyered". Rather than aim to shut her down, I think they gladly paid her for the idea in hopes of finally making money off the brand for the first time in ages.
Of all the big names of the past I'd say Commodore is the safest bet on the emulation scene. The other big players 20 years ago? Apple, Atari, IBM, perhaps you could include Tandy and TI in there as well. There are still big companies behind all those brands, and in some cases they have demonstrated a willingness to defend their rights to those brands even if they no longer support those old products.
Jeri's a sharp cookie, she has gotten in on the leading edge of a craze. Those retro joysticks (a lot of them pirate NES knockoffs) are all over the malls this Christmas...it's quite possible they will be a real craze next year. Whether they'll remain popular in the long haul I'm not sure. In any case, the original NY Times article is right, Jeri has all the hallmarks of becoming another Woz or Burell or Dr. Roberts. I'd ventrue to say there'll be more neat stuff to come from here in the future.
Re:Netcraft: Commodore is dead. (Score:2)
Anyway, this product is licensed. Always a good idea when sinking $$ into hardware.
Article free of registration. (Score:2, Insightful)
eureka! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:eureka! (Score:3, Informative)
Buyer beware
that noise you are about to hear ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:that noise you are about to hear ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:that noise you are about to hear ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:that noise you are about to hear ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:that noise you are about to hear ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:that noise you are about to hear ... (Score:3, Funny)
NO way (Score:2, Insightful)
The good thing from this story is that I hope employers will open their ears and eyes to the fact that university is USELESS to form engineers when the drive is not there, and that university is just a replacement for forced military service.
Re:NO way (Score:2)
I wouldn't call it trivial, but yeah... when I read "Self-Taught Chip Designer", I was surprised.
impossible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Impossible? What about the guys who invented the first chips? Did they go to some class that taught how to build chips which will be invented in the future?
You can buy the same books that they have at schools. You can learn the same things on your own that you'd learn in schools. Some people (such as myself) are tinkerers, and we learn better by experimenting on our own than we do sitting in a classroom.
I find it funny that I've also heard people saying you need to go to school to be a programmer or work in the computer industry. Most of us geeks know that's also false.
Re:impossible? (Score:5, Informative)
FPGAs are programmed in Verilog or VHDL; it's not much different from programming a computer. All you need is a development board with the FPGA plugged in (the FPGA makers make eval boards specifically to support this), and a connection to your PC so you can download the compiled design into the FPGA.
The problem with FPGAs is that they're very similar to SRAM, and when they lose power, they lose their programming. So they have to program themselves every time they power on, meaning you need a separate ROM chip on the board for it. Worse, because of this and because of the sheer cost per chip of FPGAs, they aren't very good for designs with large production volumes (they are good for small volumes, though, because you don't have to get a custom chip made, which has a high initial cost). So, all you have to do is get your FPGA design converted to an ASIC; there's several companies that specialize in exactly this.
Basically, all this girl had to do was do the actual HDL design at home, test and debug it on a prototype board, then when it was finished send it to a manufacturer to have them make ASICs in large volume from it. You don't need your own fabrication plant any more than you need your own photo developing lab to make photos.
Re:impossible? (Score:5, Insightful)
And as far as the "all this girl had to do" line, no way. All she had to do was:
1) Implement a 6502 processor. There is a free core or two floating around, which she likely used. Still not exactly trivial, though.
2) Reverse-engineer and implement the DRAM circuitry. The design does not use DRAM, but you still need to emulate certain portions of the hardware for timing reasons. When DRAM refreshes, the processor has to snooze.
3) Reverse-engineer and implement the SID sound chip. Fairly major headache.
4) Reverse-engineer and implement the video circuitry. Major headache. This system even had hardware sprites.
5) Reverse-engineer and implement the different hardware ports.
6) Include a bridge that would allow a PC keyboard to emulate a C64 keyboard.
7) Emulate a cassette drive and load it with warez.
8) Implement the analog bits of the video and sound circuitry. Maybe somebody else did this.
In short, I am impressed.
I have been through an ASIC tape-out. It costs in the neighborhood of $100K. MUCH cheaper to go with a cheap FPGA and serial-EEPROM for stuff like this. Once you get well over 10,000 units shipped, it is time to start looking at an ASIC. Until then, a cheap FPGA is probably your best bet.
Re:impossible? (Score:5, Informative)
No, she did her own core, which is both smaller and faster than the free cores out there.
> 2) Reverse-engineer and implement the DRAM circuitry. The design does not use DRAM, but you still need to emulate certain portions of the hardware for timing reasons. When DRAM refreshes, the processor has to snooze.
The NTSC unit is SRAM based. The C64 uses transparent DRAM refresh during the VIC's half of every cycle. The PAL unit will use SDRAM.
> 3) Reverse-engineer and implement the SID sound chip. Fairly major headache.
MAJOR headache.
> 4) Reverse-engineer and implement the video circuitry. Major headache. This system even had hardware sprites.
Yes, it took her years, and there are still timing glitches. It's amazingly compatible though.
5) Reverse-engineer and implement the different hardware ports.
I believe this was fairly easy though.
> 6) Include a bridge that would allow a PC keyboard to emulate a C64 keyboard.
IIrc that's a small state machine and a matrix, nothing too hairy.
> 7) Emulate a cassette drive and load it with warez.
That was done in software by Adrian Gonzalez. The NY Times article concentrated on Jeri herself, so I guess it's forgivable that they didn't mention that there was a software team as well (Adrian and Robin Harbron were the main programmers, plus me and Mark Seelye helped patch games).
> 8) Implement the analog bits of the video and sound circuitry. Maybe somebody else did this.
Nope, all Jeri.
Those people doubting her hardware skills really shouldn't talk without checking facts, and if you think that designing things in VHDL is as simple as programming in C you need a clue. No, make that two. And for the record, it's designed with a mix of VHDL and schematic capture.
Emulate a tape drive?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Why in God's name would you emulate the tape drive as a means to load software?
It would be one hell of a lot easier to just have the program loader (you know, the piece that lets you pick what game in the joystick you want to play) swap in the right bank of ROM (for a cartridge game), or RAM image, point the virtual 6502's program pointer at the right place (or just twiddle the magic address up there in
Re:impossible? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's almost enough to make me want to watch QVC to see about picking one up.
Re:impossible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure now, but it wasn't too long ago that you had to spend a large amount of money on a compiler, and a very expensive harddrive, since your sourcecode would take up more space than the floppy your program would eventually live on.
I remember spending $500 on the Merlin assembler so I could write Apple][ games.
Plus, all you need to *design*
Re:NO way (Score:4, Interesting)
How is it impossible to be a self-taught chip designer? There are these books like "Principles of CMOS VLSI Design" (Weste, Eshrahian) that are used to TEACH people how do design these chips! Cedra and Smith is another good one for learnin' about transistors and semiconductors.
I'm not saying you can set up a chip-fab in your closet but you can learn all this stuff.
Re:NO way (Score:3, Informative)
Not true; you use the software. Now, I know you said the software was expensive; but where there is a will, there's a way.
Ledit [tanner.com] student version came with the book; so for under $80 you can start laying out a chip; go to a college campus and you could pick this up used for a song. I'm sure you could also get evaluation and free versions of Verilog [verilog.net], too.
As for the fabbing, yep, you gotta shell out some bu
Re:NO way (Score:5, Informative)
For real digital layout you want to use Astro/Synopsys, Encounter/Cadence, Blast Fusion/Magma or Pinnacle/Sierra (Just maybe). None of these are going to cost you less than a few $100K.
Of cource before you to the point of doing layout you likely want to do synthesis (Although it is not beyond human capability to hand generate netlists). Design Compiler/Synopsys is pretty much the defacto standard but both cadence and magma has credible alternatives.
After layout you want to check your design for timing. To do this you want a Static Timing Analysis tool (Primetime from Synopsys is pretty much the only choice here for sign-off quality, though you might live with what your back-end tool has built in if you feel brave). To feed the STA tool with good data you need to extract the circuit: StarXTRC/Synopsys, Fire & Ice/Cadence, CalibreXRC are the prime contenders.
In addition you might want/need to do:
- Formal verification (To verify your final netlist conforms to your design)
- Rail analysis (To verify your power grid is adequate)
- Thermal analysis (To check your device won't melt of fail due to too high junction temperature)
- Crosstalk analysis (Check for parasitic effects on timing. Required for designs on 0.13um and better)
A complete tools suite for digital design will likely set you back $1000K. Naturally a lot of smaller designhouses will outsource the the implementation, but they will at minimum require simulators (minimum $5000 a seat) and synthesis ($100000 pr. license)
As for fabbing, $500? That would be a mighty sweet deal, even for a shared MPW run. With academic discounts and on an old process you might be able to get a slot on an MPW for $5000. On a reasonably modern process (like 0.18um) a engineering run with 6 prototyping wafers (i.e. not a MPW) will set you back somwhere between $50K to $200K
Re:NO way (Score:4, Insightful)
So many engineers focus on what can't be done, how it's impossible, or how it can't be done with tools/budget available.
I'd be much more inclined to hire her because she has shown that she has drive, motivation, and a can-do attitude. Those traits easily overcome years of education.
I can give her education, but there's no way I can give her those other things.
Re:NO way (Score:3, Insightful)
For you, FPGA programming might be trivial but you are lost when it goes down to hardware. However, not everyone in on the globe have the exactly skillset as you.
I have education in electrical automation (mainly analogue processes, logics (CS21 et.al.), instrumentation and so forth. Lot of electronics and hardware thou...)
I'm a self taught programmer in several languages and currently earning my salary at the software side on ARM9 processors.
To me, both chip design and FP
Re:NO way (Score:4, Insightful)
Point is, University students shouldn't have holes in their knowledge, and should be forced to do creative thought (yeah, there's sucky universities out there, but that's an asside). There's obviously people who learn to think on their own, and people who can get all the info they need for one area of programming or FPGA or whatever, so it's not useful for everyone, just a lot of people. On the other hand, military service teaches a less relevant kind of knowledge (for programmers) and values obedience over independent thought. It's really not the same thing at all (though this may depend on the university I suppose).
Re:NO way (Score:3, Insightful)
A girl-geek and slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
One more thing, can Slashdot's editors please stop whining about NYT's registration? To read their news for free just for filling in some info seems like a generous trade.
Re:A girl-geek and slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think the editors care. However, people used to get up in arms about the registration back when slashdot didn't warn people about it. In fact, many people still complain about NYTimes links even with the warning. Your beef is with the complainers, not with the editors.
Re:A girl-geek and slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
So they turn off the ads after you register?
Finally I can get a Comadore 64... (Score:2, Funny)
But what about Porn? (Score:2, Funny)
SHE? (Score:4, Informative)
There will always been room for the underdog (Score:5, Insightful)
Even when you think that any industry is too hard to break into because there are big companies dominating it, one can still create something that is better or worthwhile to people. Even for the sake that some people want to shop somewhere else, or buy a different brand.
I mean, think about it, for 50 years cars were being made and the corporations that made them became big 800lb gorillas. But then look, here comes Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Geo, Saturn, Lexus, Kia and now Scion.
So there is room, just take a look at the history of open source software.
Re:There will always been room for the underdog (Score:5, Insightful)
Lexus and Scion are made by Toyota.
Saturn made be General Motors,
Geo, was GM rebrand of cars made by Toyota I beleive
Subaru - Fuju Heavy Industries
Kia is from Huyndi (large comglomerate.)
But your right, software/computers are still places were an individual can make it with hard work and good design.
Also she is working for a NJ toy manufacturer not out on her own.
Re:There will always been room for the underdog (Score:3, Informative)
Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin are all owned by Ford;
Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Cadillac, GMC, Oldsmobile, Saturn, Hummer, and Saab are all owned by General Motors; and
Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, Mercedes-Benz, Maybach, and CSmart are all owned by DaimlerChrysler.
Also note that many cars are simply re-brands - i.e. the Saab 9-2 is a Subaru Impreza Wagon, the Mazda Tribute is a Ford Escape, etc... and did you know the Subaru Forestor is sold a Chevro
Re:There will always been room for the underdog (Score:3, Funny)
All the flame... (Score:4, Interesting)
Her efforts in reverse-engineering old computers and giving them new life inside modern custom chips has already earned her a cult following among small groups of "retro" personal computer enthusiasts, as well as broad respect among the insular world of the original computer hackers who created the first personal computers three decades ago. (The term "hacker" first referred to people who liked to design and create machines, and only later began to be applied to people who broke into them.)
This column actually notes the distinction between hackers and crackers, well, sort-of... Anyway it sure is refreshing!
Now if only we could come up with different words for good lawyers and bad lawyers. How about Clawyers?
Let us hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Told you So (Score:4, Interesting)
- dshaw
Apple ][ in a joystick...? (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with the IPod, you can't claim that your joystick is bigger than anyone else's joystick.
I'd hit it! (Score:4, Funny)
Don't Need School to be Educated. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to think school is more a Map to show you were you can go for success. But just like driving on the road you don't always need a Map common since and some exploring will help you get to your location as well, sometimes (usually) a little longer then normal but sometimes a lot quicker. As well with schooling like driving with a Map if you don't know where you are or where you are going the Map is useless.
That said dropping out of school is still often a bad idea, because while you may get there by chance if you had a better education it will give you at least basic directions to start out on, training people with good research skills and the ability to learn for themselves.
Re:Don't Need School to be Educated. (Score:3, Insightful)
-Mark Twain
Re:Don't Need School to be Educated. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people are forced to do both, the full time student that also worked full time commands much more respect from everyone than the guy that daddy had enough money to pay for everything or the person that was lucky enough to receive a full ride.
College enables you by providing resources that normally you would have to pay for... it's hard to study Chemistry on your own because the first step is to build a lab.
Those are the ONLY advantages to college. you can learn EVERYTHING they teach in a college without ever setting foot in one or ever listening to a "professor".
You do not receive a better education at a college, you receive a better opportunity to learn in an atmosphere that is conducive to learning.
Its a computer emulation, not just games. (Score:3, Informative)
Slashdot covered the release of the device here.
slashdot coverage of the device commodore game device [slashdot.org]
I discovered..
(when I submitted the story 12 hours ago
New York Times? (Score:5, Funny)
That they're just making shit up?
Finally someone I can relate too (Score:5, Insightful)
It really makes you question your role in society...especially when it seems that women are portrayed like idiots or dumb blondes in the media. Or that all I should care about is makeup, clothes, and hair (trust me I'm not that obsessed - just ask my husband). Sometimes even today I ask myself "what they hell am I doing?" "Why didn't I do elementary ed like every girl I know?" It is still something I struggle with even today.
I always wished I could have had another woman to look up and admire for their technical achievements. I almost never thought it would happen in my lifetime. Congratulations to her on her long list of achievements, and hopefully she can encourage another generation of woman to get into tech....especially engineering!!
Re:Finally someone I can relate too (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean to say you've never heard of Grace Hopper? Hell I'm male and she's one of my favorite inspirations:
Grace Hopper [sdsc.edu]
Enjoy,
She's not the first or only (Score:3, Insightful)
While women are still fighting the stereotypes of the past, there are examples of women excelling in almost every field, even traditonal male only roles such as CEO (eg Carol Bartz, CEO and president of
History of Female Geekdom (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is a moderately comprehensive index of women scientists [ua.edu] throughout history. Some names are linked to biographies.
The woman who commands most of my respect, geek-wise, was Mary Annings. She discovered her first new species of dinosaur at age 12, and a second at age 20. She made a living collecting
(and extracting as necessary) fossils, which she sorted and indexed. It is said that sh
the first computer programmer (Score:3, Informative)
ada lovelace [sdsc.edu]
C-One (Score:4, Interesting)
http://c64upgra.de/c-one/ [c64upgra.de]
Is Stroker on the joystick? (Score:3, Funny)
Well-funded, well-staffed...???? (Score:5, Interesting)
One only need to have been part of one of these mythical "well-funded and well-staffed" corporate teams (or to know someone who has been part of one) to know that the garage-based tech hobbyist is nowhere near extinction. High-power staffing and funds are nothing--NOTHING--next to the power of a real vision. A single person with a great idea and a little know-how can lay waste to any corporate team. Don't get so caught up with the corporate facade that you start to doubt it. Watch how many little companies with great ideas that corporations buy up. They do it so regularly that it hardly makes the news anymore. The real ideas aren't coming out of boardroom discussions.
And remember that IBM was once the indomitable corporate force and Apple and Microsoft were the little start-ups. That's why people who talk about how Linux won't change anything make me laugh. I don't even use Linux, not even a big fan of it, and I know it has yet to make its biggest impact. That's how this stuff works. Give it time. History repeats itself.
Public schematics for the C64. (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if that was the case, she still deserves props for thinking of doing it in the first place and then making it happen. I don't mean to make light of her accomplishments or anything.
Consults Google... Yep, there were schematics available. here [ibiblio.org] is one place to see them.
Re:Public schematics for the C64. (Score:3, Informative)
But the schematics just show how the board itself is wired up. Yup, this pin of this chip goes to that pin of that chip. You now have about 10% or less of the design. All of the magic happens IN the chips themselves. THAT was the hard part. There is a free core or two for the processor (assuming that it is accurate). However, the sound and video chips are an entirely different story. Those must have been a pain
Success HS is about doing what you're told (Score:3, Insightful)
Clever kids get bored out of their minds doing "busy-work", but that's what you're graded on.
Welcome to socialized education.
Explain this (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure you can fiddle around with autocad and many other cad electronic design tools but that does not make someone an electrical engineer or chip designer.
It makes me wonder how she got started and how she got hired and who invested in her idea's and got her work to the fabrication plants that built her products.
Re:just think (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe not as much... she might have ended up as the employee of some big computer company designing games or the like.
Maybe it was the *lack* of education that put her in the difficult situations that made her give the best from herself. It was her efforts to go against the tides that made her outstand from the average geeks like us. Maybe that was the pressure needed to turn her into a full-fledged diamond.
I wish i had her courage to go against the tides and established principles. *Sighs*
I'll venture a guess: (Score:5, Insightful)
MUCH LESS
For the really creative problem solver types like her, school is a dangerous reconditioning of one's mind and social outlook. If you're not suited for it, excessive schooling/socialization can kill both your entrepreneurial spirit and your creative talent.
It is NOT ironic in the slightest that so [woz.org] many [microsoft.com] great [prism-magazine.org] innovators [apple.com] were drop-outs.
Re:I'll venture a guess: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, you might be able to argue that struggling to make it on her own drove her (and people like her) to excel, but there are definitely many untested and experimental methods of education geared toward the very talented in hopes of boosting their potential.
Unfortunately, our curren
Re:just think (Score:3, Interesting)
A four to six year delay (depending on if she wanted to pursue a MA/MS) in doing what she really wanted to do, only to work as a code monkey in a cubicle? $100k in debt? If she went to school this likely wouldn't have happened for her.
She's done something pretty practical, that exemplifies she has some skills most people don't. That's worth way more than some printed scraps of paper with her name on it. This is coming from an o
Re:just think (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah But (Score:5, Insightful)
Cobol was designed by a Grace Murray Hopper.
Frances Elizabeth Snyder Holberton was involved in Fortran's development.
Ada Lovelace wrote first program to calculate Bernouli numbers.
If you're going to troll, learn how to troll right.
Re:Bills Gates, too. (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that Bill was rich before he founded Microsoft, right? His father is a millionaire.
Re:Bills Gates, too. (Score:4, Informative)
It takes more than just brains and business sense to make money, it takes capital, and it's hard to get capital without taking smaller amounts of capital and making larger amounts of capital (well, banks are willing to loan you some money, but ironically, only if you have money or assets to back the loan first).
Most people who make a billion dollars in their lifetime start with a base of some wealth to work from. It's not impossible to go from zero, it's just much harder, since you have to get to a few tens of millions first - in other words, you need that many more lucky streaks, brains, business sense, whatever, without any big busts or screwups in the middle.
Ya know Donald Trump? His father was a successful real estate developer in the outer boroughs of New York in the first half of this century. Donald took his fathers business, and had the courage and built the connections needed to take it into Manhattan and pursue bigger projects. In other words, he brought something to the table, but no, he didn't do it all from scratch.
In any case, this is pretty obvious stuff. We can't all leave our children billions of dollars, but you don't need to, to give them the tools to be financial successful. It's not so hard to make and save a few million dollars over the course of your career, by always underspending your earnings, saving money, making smart investments and so on. And giving your children a financially stable platform gives them the opportunity to explore career options and take bigger risks in general, which is a good thing for more than just financial success, it gives you more opportunities to find a career that is rewarding and in tune with your goals in life.
Re:Bills Gates, too. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that means his father was rich.
Re:Bills Gates, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I think I'm in love. (Score:3, Funny)
from the lack of the ring... i believe she is...
but you missed the more important question first:
is she straight?
(of course, i assumed the question to the question that comes before that: are you a male?
Re:I think I'm in love. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:should of stayed in school (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but a silly joystick running 20-year-old video games is a far greater achievement than most individual engineers will ever achieve working for large companies.