Hey, I just gave a solution and I've never done this exact thing before, so, uh....wait a minute....never mind.

I run VMs (different versions of Linux and Windows) on top of a Windows host all the time. Ubuntu won't have much of a performance hit. You can run them using VMPlayer (I did that for months until I finally upgraded to VMWorkstation) and installing is a two step...install VMPlayer, then copy the VM. Just an idea.

"The study also found that men are nearly twice as likely as women to have posted updates, comments, photos or videos that they later regret " or "Men more impulsive than women" Hmmm. Big surprise there.

You'll find that your skills, assuming you can put together a decent website, will do fine if you work with a local organization.
There are tons of organizations near you/anyone who need help with their web sites, but who would feel very uncomfortable working with an eLance or an overseas company...and they don't have the budget to really pay the costs of what most consulting firms would charge. This means you are going to have to get out and make some contacts. The easiest thing you can do, assuming you can present at all, is to put together a talk (approx 20 minutes) that you can give with power point and without on "Promoting your company on the web" and then offer it to your local chamber of commerce and Rotary and women in business organizations. The information has to be useful whether they hire you or not. But there will be leads that come from that and off you go.

I have no votes. I am voting this up. Suarez captures "near future" possibles...a thriller that doesn't require a lot of new technology to make it happen. Adding on Corey Doctorow "Makers" and "Little Brother"

That would be Moses. The baby Jesus would walk on it.

So are you arguing that OpenID is sending inaccurate information? What's your point?

Not sure where you are, but in the USA you can call yourself anything you like, even change your name to it, as long as it's not for fraud. TTY PuTTY

So we'd have plenty of time to get out of the way....whew!

No flame, but there are a lot of front ends that can work with SQL backends, including PostgreSQL. Depends on what you are looking for and what you are trying to create. Many web frameworks can use PostgreSQL as the backend. Heck, you can even make VB talk to PostgreSQL if you want. Java does just fine. Delphi, since you are obviously willing to pay something. But it comes down to what language(s) you want to work in and then looking around a little bit.

Agreeing with parent...Installing on Linux and Windows is for people who want or need flexibility and are willing to put up with some effort to make that happen.
If said 67 year old clueless dad wants to use a computer, he's probably clueless enough to just buy a box with what he needs installed already on it. Or if he REALLY wants to be limited, he can buy an Apple iPad. Since he's clueless, he won't mix the flexibility.
And since he's clueless, he'd never figure out multi-touch anyway, so it's a non-issue for him.
If all we are trying to do is serve aforementioned clueless dad, then we can stop all research and development now. You've taken a lot of pressure off the computer industry. Thanks.

"Fixing" (as in "fixing your dog") crappy parents would eliminate the problem at its source. The problem is you don't know if they are going to be crappy parents beforehand. Maybe we could check to see if they got a D in high school.

The longer version is:
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, consult.
Those who can't consult, criticize.

Absolutely correct. If you are putting the files on a USB drive without encrypting you are setting yourself up to become a news story, and not a good one. I'm going to assume that you are not in a facility that is planning on getting any of the incentive money from ARRA because any time you move outside the network (copying to USB, CD, DVD, another computer not constrained by the network) you HAVE to encrypt....you should anyway, but to qualify for meaningful use you must. If you have lots of files to share all the time, you might consider getting a PACS; there are open source PACS that have a lot of capability and would let you share, notate, and track access (HIPAA again). Take a look at dcm4chee

You insensitive clod! That's Native Amer....oops. Sorry, My Bad.