Help! I’m an up and coming CS Major and I haven’t even made my first million yet! Less than 4 months to go before I turn 21!
Quick! Ideas!
(If, somehow, I do make a million dollars from someone’s idea, they will receive a 50-50 cut. I swear. I swear on Cecil and on my registration here on the boards.)
Best method: Inherit it.
Second best: marry it
Ask your big brother for it. Then flee his laughter.
Get to know Bill Gates personally. Then, when hanging out at his place, root through the sofa cushions for loose change. There’s bound to be a million just lying around somewhere. Tip the recliner as well. I used to find lots of change in my grandfather’s chair.
Anyhoo…
It seems to me that the best way to make a million is to convince someone else you can. Lots of people make their millions (And billions) by connecting the man with the idea to the man with the money, and riding off of other’s talents. Bill Gates comes immediately to mind 
Although Gates did actually do some stuff, it was mostly savvy that put him where he is.
It sounds like a cheat, but honestly, I don’t see how we’d have half the things we have without someone with savvy to make that connection.
I’ll do for you what I’ve done for many others:
Play the lottery this week. I will arrange it so you win. When you do, you owe me half.
Hasn’t happened yet, but what the hell…if someday someone *does *win after I tell them that, I’ll happily take my cut. 
Shaolinrabbit wrote
That’s silly. Bill Gates got where he is by delivering what people needed to them. He got there on a lot of hard work, and a lot of smarts. (of course, a lot of luck didn’t hurt.) The notion that he rode someone else’s talents is just not so.
What Bill Gates understood is that he could take software that was already written, change a couple widgets, and declare it is HIS property. Bill knows a good idea when he sees it, and when he ceases it, he knows how to shield its secrets from others.
To make a million …
talent + tenacity + luck = rich and famous. Talent and tenacity will suffice, but with any luck you don’t have to wait so long.
Well it’s the price of being a ronin, no stipend. You could go find a rich daimyo, become one of his hatamoto then sell his secrets.