Hey, did you see that Microchip shipped its five-billionth microcontroller late last year (thats 5000000000 microcontrollers)? They also sold a billion of them during the year leading up to this total.
I had no idea there were that many amateurs out there.

http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/e...oSOLUTIONS.pdf (see page 9 for details)