With the Powerball hitting over half a billion dollars, many have been fantasizing about what they would do with that kind of money. So I'd like to pose that question to you, and find out what your plans would be. Lets say you win millions in the Powerball, or have a long-lost relative leave you millions in inheritance, or buy a few hundred cheap stocks in a company that becomes the next Apple and makes you a millionaire overnight. What would you do with millions of dollars? I'll go first.

I would start a company that researches and develops inexpensive yet effective prosthetics, with the goal of getting them into the hands(or nubs) of underprivileged children and young adults who have need of them. Essentially it would be a charity organization, with a research and development department that looks for ways to make simple prosthetics that are cheap to produce, a manufacturing wing to produce them for market, and a charity wing that can get them to kids who's parents can't afford today's expensive modern prosthetics. One goal would be to produce an open set of blueprints that anyone with access to a machine shop could use or modify, free of charge, to produce their own prosthetic limbs for friends or relatives who need them. If complex electronics are needed, easy-to-use all-in-one PCBs and motor kits could be ordered at or near cost for use in these projects.

I don't know how exactly I would go about starting and managing this, but I have several family friends in the business sector I could go to if I suddenly had the resources to pursue it.

Wow, you have a really great goal, DShiznit!

Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of possessing millions of dollars at once, simply because virtually everyone who knows you won is going to ask for some dough. If I got a lot of money, I would make it as secret as possible; pay off all my debts and mortgages, square away my retirement, and leave the rest in a separate account for my children to inherit when I die (since they'll most likely have a better idea of what to do with it).

I would divide it up, something like this:

1/3 for charity/medical research (cancer, cystic fibrosis, ADD/ADHD)

1/2 to start up a company that makes software/hardware and graphing calcs (seriously). My company would be called GinDiamond Compilers

1/6 for personal investing

Spending it all, quickly and without worrying about it?

Finance construction of a pellet mill in Chittenden County, VT. Give fat donations to 20 or so of my favorite charities. Invest some of it somewhere relatively safe. Make a business plan for something with Kerm and other Cemetech staff. Finance some campaigns for state-level Libertarian political candidates.

"Smaller" stuff:
Pay for my family's healthcare and housing and education. Build a super-eco-friendly hobbit house for myself and buy a giant plot of land.

Travel, and probably never stop--there's something very appealing to me about a nomadic lifestyle, I just want to be able to to it in luxury rather than squalor.

Amen to that. Step one for me would be to establish Cemetech as an LLC with a business plan and get some smart guys (like Merthsoft, Elfprince, Jonimus, and Tari) on building cool things while I finish my PhD. Rent a much bigger apartment while I work on my PhD. Graduate, work full-time heading up Cemetech.

I'd donate to charities but it wouldn't be a lump sum. It'd be an annual payment to the same lot of charities, much like I'd get annual payments of the lotto winnings. The rest I'd use to travel for a few weeks out of every year; I have nothing to pay off and neither does my family. I've got a friend who is traveling Brazil, Peru and other locations on Motorcycle and the pictures he's sending are amazing. I'd love to do something like that, but from a car. Haha.

Other than a trip I'd probably two cars I've wanted and finally get a professional body camera or two with some serious lenses for those trips. Save the rest and at the end of the payments move out to the middle of no where with a bunch of acreage - if it exists - and live out my life in a small house, equally small family and a part time job to keep myself busy.

I would buy a decent house, decent car, a nice computer, and then put some in a saving account, some in investments, and donate the rest.

Buy a warehouse, renovate it, and fill it with cars - something like Jay Leno's garage. That would probably chew through a ~50 million. The rest I'd use to buy a house (there goes another 2 million in the bay area >.< ), and probably invest the rest donating whatever interest it makes.

I'd start a game company with a console that's extremely durable (solid state, full metal construction, etc) and open, developer-wise (using something like SD cards for games), but has anti-piracy protection built into the cartridges. (SD cards are cheap enough to justify as a game medium, considering games sell for $30 upwards, even if they're not big titles)

The SD cards would contain the OS, where the system has a loader that's functionally equivalent to GRUB (chainloading)

The idea is to make the system as appealing for developers as possible, while still making it extremely appealing to all varieties of consumer.

Open != Open hardware. There are so many problems with that (IBM-PC Compatible, anyone?)

Devs who want the anti-piracy cards license with the company, but that's not mandatory. A developer could just as easily set up their own software-based protection and bypass us completely, but they would lose the ability to use logos and certain trademarks. (such as 'An Official (brand) Game')

It wouldn't be sold below cost. That way, if most developers go non-licensing (or if people use it for general computing) it doesn't hurt the company: it helps, via increasing console sales.

I would buy my mom a house ~500K
buy my cousin a new car ~100K
buy me a new car ~150k ish
BUy me and my cousin a nice house ~2mil ish
put 200 mil in investments, and donate the interest
put the rest in different investments, and life off of that for the rest of my life

I'm for investing in starting a company after paying off debts and my parent's debts.

I was thinking along the same lines for my prosthetic charity/company. I would need skilled engineers and machinists that can think outside the box to not only come up with low-cost ways to produce prosthetics, but to design easy-to-use electronics packages for the DIY crowd as well.

*Bump* someone beat me to the punch, and didn't even need to win the lottery to do it:

http://io9.com/5982552/two-hobbyists-create-a-diy-prosthetic-hand-for-a-5+year+old-boy-in-south-africa

Start a colony on some island somewhere.

-I'm obviously gonna travel. I plan to regardless of if I win or not, but I'll travel a lot more if I win.
-Get a condo or house (preferably a condo and one near downtown Quebec City. Not sure if I want to go through the hassle of taking care of a house or hire people to do so )
-That new home would obviously have a room filled with video games, maybe even one or two arcade system, a quite large TV and a few computers in case of LAN party.
-Buy A ****LOAD of LEGO's, just sets of random multicolored pieces, then have fun building oversized structures.
-One or more sabbatical year from work, then work part time.
-Become season ticket holder for Nordiques (assuming they return) for the entire time that I'll not work. In such case, the car would be useless because parking at hockey games here is a major PITA, so I would have to continue relying on bus transit.
-Buy every TI model that I still lack (TI-92 Plus, Voyage 200, TI-84 Plus Silver Edition)
-Buy lots of rare video games and consoles

ha, Legos are amazing.

@Kerm and his idea of cemetech as an LLC:
any chance you would crank out some of these hardware projects or mods we make here?