Yet because of the 2nd Amendment its apparently sacrosanct to even discuss limiting guns. Maybe, just maybe, the founding fathers needed to raise and army and the best way was to allow everyone to have a gun and so the 2nd Amendment was created as part of our founding documents? Maybe they only considered single shot muskets? maybe they would have a slightly different take on 25 clip Uzi's on every street corner?
The Founders wanted the Second Amendment to make sure citizens were able to use lethal force against the state and federal government if necessary, in order to protect their freedom, and to otherwise provide for and defend themselves. This requires them to have whatever weapons which are capable of countering their opposition. The Founders knew well this meant ever increasing firepower, they were not stupid.
We have to remove the guns, or this will keep happening. Do you disagree with that? If so, how would you suggest we prevent this from happening in the future?
No, we do not have to, and if we want to remain free, we cannot remove the guns. You cannot possibly expect that if the citizens disarm, that the government and the nation's criminal underground will also disarm. Unless they do, we become slaves.
The problem is not the weapons, it is our lazy, incompetent society, full of people who can't be bothered to be personally responsible for their actions. We tolerate things from people today that are destroying us. Violence is merely one of many signs of our internal problems.
The good thing is that those problems can be solved, and without the need to disarm free people and turn them into slaves.
You worry about "25 clip uzis..." but don't seem to understand that they very reason there are so many is because the cowards carrying them use them to intimidate and terrorize UNARMED people. As soon as people are armed and trained to defense themselves, those cowards won't want to be anywhere near a gun. They also would not have easy access to the guns if we actually enforced decades old existing laws, and actually started punishing these losers for their crimes.
But no... instead we spend ten times as much money enforcing punitive laws to support corporate welfare, punishing people who have done nothing wrong, all because a bunch of uncreative morons want government mandated cashflow for themselves, even if it means destroying our freedom.
How about when people are irresponsible, we let them take the fall instead of bailing them out? How about instead of coddling a murderer and spending millions caring for them and trying to "figure out why they did it", we instead just shoot them and spend the money helping the victims?
There are a lot of solutions to violence that don't involve the undesirable, unattainable, and idiotic disarmament of free citizens.
Notice that the top homicide rates are for countries with some of the most strict gun control laws. Looks to me like you proved the opposite of your stated point.
Not so shockingly, you are full of shyte. You are just repeating the same mythological bullshit you've been spoon fed and are dumb enough to believe.
In nearly ever jurisdiction where guns are banned, two things happen: increase in crime and loss of freedom. The criminals are still armed, only now they have little to fear from their victims.
Guy kills several people with a gun, and the idiots in our news media say "Gunman kills XYZ...".
However, see a guy kill a dozen with a knife, and it says "Man attacks shoppers..." or some other low key heading, and they don't mention the weapon used at all. Why aren't people who kill with knives called knifemen, or like the german guy who killed a couple dozen with a baseball bad not called batmen or clubmen?
Answer: because guns are used by citizens limit the power of government, and you have a lot of little dictators in government who can't handle the idea of an armed population telling them "Hell no", and enforcing it with lethality.
It has nothing to do with safety or concern over dead children, and the laws won't help any of that anyway. Never have, never will.
Its very simple: the people in power are corrupt and rotten, and the gun is a particular tool that can take them out of power or prevent an increase in their power.
Obama can squeeze out fake tears all day long, but the fact is he is only crying because we are still armed and it limits his power. That's why he and a lot of other little Hitlers and Stalins want to disarm the population.
Because unless your needs are pretty basic and you are willing to put up with various issues like lack of polish and features, you can't recompile "90% of what you need".
You cannot just "recompile" tons of software people need and use every day. I'd be thrilled if Linux could do half of what I need, but it can't.
Even when I have the source, that does not mean I can use recompiled versions. They may not work well, be poorly performing or debugged, or be missing features on the less mature platform. In fact, that's virtually guaranteed.
Open source is great, but the code base lacks a lot of critical, fun, and well polished applications that people use all the time, and most of the time the community is very hesitant to put in the work needed to make it so.
I would love it if everything I needed was open source and also high quality, but that's just not true, and probably won't be for years.
Can we supply enough diesel to meet demand? Isn't it produced as a byproduct of gasoline production? What I read suggests that we could not keep up with demand.
Wow, what an ignoramus you are. I'd almost be willing to agree if by religions you also included zealous atheists and other religions, but I bet you don't (yes, atheists, despite the name, preach, evangelize, and are zealous often far above and beyond any of those awful religious people, so let's ban them too).
A good number of these religious people you say are obviously very weak intellectually created the world's technology, including the technology allowing you to spout your ignorance here. Really, you'd appoint a guardian to people like that? The ones that made everything you depend on?
A smoker blows smoke into the air your breathe, and they stink, and their horrid breath carries the little bits of their excessive phlegm and smoke particles to you.
Yes, but the aircraft are not glued together in such a way they are impossible to repair.
The Apple/Airplane analogy would be what if the Boeing 787 had its engines glued to the wing so that if it needed an engine overhaul, you either had to replace both wings, or the entire aircraft.
...but let's face it, some of us have no interest in management, or consulting. That's why, after a 15-year career in software development, I turned to teaching. And if you're laughing because I'm advocating teaching as an alternative career, you miss my point: Sometimes getting out of the field is a viable option. I grew tired of lining the pockets of CEOs and PHBs and gutless business owners who simply ran their businesses into the ground, businesses built partially on my hard work. Sometimes you have to take a step back and ask yourself "What exactly have I done for society these past years?" Chances are, if you're a software developer at a "large investment bank," not a hell of a lot.
Good points.
I have found that working for things I believe in, generally has also helped my survival a great deal. Most of the time when I am looking for work it is in military, research, or industry. I believe they are foundations of this country and need help, and whenever I work in those fields I'm generally happy. Yes there is all kinds of bullshit to deal with, but you get that wherever you go. Most of the shops I work for, they are generally focused and have well known goals and needs.
Every time I have strayed from that past, I've been fairly unhappy. In a couple of places I made a six figure income, and I was absolutely miserable. Management by whim, customers internal and external who were clueless but drove everything, managers who got raises by screwing everything rotten.
NOTE: I'm not saying you have to focus on those three areas to be happy and productive, that's just my particular choice, and doesn't include a few other qualifiers I have developed over the years. It just happens that much of the time those shops are in the "let's just get work done" category and I find they work better for me.
Wherever you try to apply for work, think long and hard about actually doing the work and what you are contributing to. That will tell you far more about how happy you will be and how secure you job will be than pay scales. Also remember that even seemingly minor differences in benefits can end up being worth 5, 10, 20K US dollars a year in pay. I took a job for $20K less than what I was making recently, but the benefits are worth over 25K more and all of them are cheaper and less money out of my own paycheck.
Honestly, that is the worst advice I have heard in a long time. Management is fine if you like it but the argument that at years old means you should be in is just dumb and insanely counterproductive.
If you are 25 and have the talent to manage, do it.
If you are 65 and a good programmer or system administrator, do it.
I realize a lot of companies share this view, but that's because a lot of companies suck, and its one of the biggest causes of organizational dysfunction in the world.
I have always wanted to learn and use LISP, however I find it very hard to use the actual tools. C tools are very easy to use, and producing compiled code is very easy.
Isn't part of the reason LISP isn't widely accepted because it is difficult to work with outside its now largely dead native environments?
Just finding out how to produce standalone executables can be an exercise in frustration. I once did finally work out how to do it in Common LISP, but the process was ugly, cumbersome and the results were big and slow.
I have rarely found the LISP community to be much help. My questions about how to use it for common programming jobs was met with "just start and stop your code in the LISP environment (manually)" or "there is a compiler that will do what you want and its only $5000".
Public health care similar to socalled "Obamacare" is commonplace in most of Europe, where the costs are lower and quality is higher (citation needed? LMGTFY).
Why would costs rise and quality decrease in the US? Is there something inherently wrong with the US that they can't make this work as well as in Europe.
Does it work well in Europe? Or are they being subsidized by nations like the USA? Even if you don't believe that, isn't Europe currently and rapidly going bankrupt?
World shipping lanes... they work, correct? But why? Is it because how Europe handles them is working? Or, is it because the USA and a tiny few other nations do the bulk of the fighting and funding to keep the shipping lanes open? The world does very little but benefits greatly.
In any case, I don't see our changes to healthcare working over here because they don't address the fundamental problems with our system. In the past we had a pretty good system, and it was 100% private. I don't see the logic in going 180 degrees from a successful period being the way to get back to that period's success.
Also it seems to me that at fundamental problem we have is we use insurance improperly. It used to be something you bought only for emergencies, bills you could not afford to pay. Even when I was a kid, my family paid almost all medical care out of pocket, only using insurance when necessary. Almost any medical services we needed were affordable and competent, and I grew up poor. It was also 100% private.
Then over the years policies were instituted forcing insurance to start paying for nearly everything. I'm not sure how anyone can be surprised that costs skyrocketed and the system became corrupt. We have of course made some amazing improvements in medical knowledge and technology, but in many ways the service level and staff competency is much lower now, and almost nothing is affordable out of pocket any more. Even simple checkups now cost more than what used to be emergencies.
It seems to me we have some fundamental problems: misuse of insurance, massive corruption, legal system abuse and dysfunction, and failed central planning. I don't see any system working until those issues are removed.
Linus isn't talking about gaming, performance or anything else like that. The point is : nVidia ships a binary blob and an obfuscated source portion that needs to be built outside of the vanilla kernel. That is what Linus is talking about, nVidia's lack of cooperation with the kernel people at integrating their drivers into the main line kernel in a way that respects the project's goals and visions.
Why you people are discussing the performance when that is not at issue, I have no idea. It was all pretty clear to me what Linus meant.
nVidia does that because that's how they protect themselves.
Drivers for Linux suck because it doesn't have a valid ABI, and not even a very stable software API.
Fix that problem, the political bullshit, and the "let's change it just because we can" mentality, and you might see things change for the better.
Millions play and it is easier to attack the messenger because it is anti male biased but I am telling you it is not. I have a friend who is a woman who plays to escape as well and I told her that her life is going to suck more unless she stops playing. We do not talk as much as a result:-)
As you write it above, your statement is wholly unfounded. If you made a blanket statement like that and she stays away from you, more power to her. I suspect you left a lot out, or I hope so anyway.
I play DDO a lot, 90% of it with a good friend. She and I have both benefitted from it, its hardly making our life suck. We are both working professionals with careers that require a high degree of training and dedication. We play #1 out of friendship, and #2 to dump some stress from life. Our life will not suck less if we stop playing, so if your above statement is true, then it must be highly situational. It certainly is not true in general.
We both work hard and the game keeps us connected and let's us blow off some steam together. I have some friends which due to circumstance, I've not been able to see in person for many years now. Without things like online gaming, we'd have precious few moments of interaction, and I find my life made better by this.
Of course, I also drink alcohol, and don't have the problems of alcoholism. Personal responsibility is the bigger issue, no matter how much we try to come up with convenient excuses and other things to blame our mistakes on otherwise.
You could do the same with a lot of computer software for desktop/laptop as well. Unfortunately most of it is utter garbage or very expensive, or severely limited on the platforms it will work with.
There is a heavy need for good software but what is out there isn't great.
The problem is that 4th Edition is horrible in every other way. Its grossly overpowered and overcomplicated once you leave the basics.
THAC0 and those old rules were pretty horrible from a usability standpoint, but we've gone too far the other way. The abstractions don't even make sense for high fantasy any more.
3.5 and Pathfinder are the last really playable versions to me, though 4th edition rules will probably work well for the upcoming Neverwinter MMO.
If you want to introduce people to RPGs, you can also consider the D6 system. Its simpler than just about any of them and fast to learn, leaving the game largely up to the players.
Give that a try. Very realistic combat. No silly hit points or armor class. Instead you get things like "your opponent strikes your upper shoulder, piercing the leather but not the underlay, leaving a heavy bruise on your upper arm." Your skills are not arbitrarily assigned, to gain them you must practice and use them. No levels, no hit points, skills are raw numbers. Much like real life, even a very skilled fighter can be killed by a six stone weakling that hits you right, or maybe you just get an infection. Of course, in the interest of fun, its fairly easy to modify things so you are fairly "heroic" as long as you don't do stupid things... in which case well... your character should die.
If you want to go in another direction where long-term role play of lives happens, try Ars Magica, where games typically cover many years.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet because of the 2nd Amendment its apparently sacrosanct to even discuss limiting guns. Maybe, just maybe, the founding fathers needed to raise and army and the best way was to allow everyone to have a gun and so the 2nd Amendment was created as part of our founding documents? Maybe they only considered single shot muskets? maybe they would have a slightly different take on 25 clip Uzi's on every street corner?
The Founders wanted the Second Amendment to make sure citizens were able to use lethal force against the state and federal government if necessary, in order to protect their freedom, and to otherwise provide for and defend themselves. This requires them to have whatever weapons which are capable of countering their opposition. The Founders knew well this meant ever increasing firepower, they were not stupid.
We have to remove the guns, or this will keep happening. Do you disagree with that? If so, how would you suggest we prevent this from happening in the future?
No, we do not have to, and if we want to remain free, we cannot remove the guns. You cannot possibly expect that if the citizens disarm, that the government and the nation's criminal underground will also disarm. Unless they do, we become slaves.
The problem is not the weapons, it is our lazy, incompetent society, full of people who can't be bothered to be personally responsible for their actions. We tolerate things from people today that are destroying us. Violence is merely one of many signs of our internal problems.
The good thing is that those problems can be solved, and without the need to disarm free people and turn them into slaves.
You worry about "25 clip uzis..." but don't seem to understand that they very reason there are so many is because the cowards carrying them use them to intimidate and terrorize UNARMED people. As soon as people are armed and trained to defense themselves, those cowards won't want to be anywhere near a gun. They also would not have easy access to the guns if we actually enforced decades old existing laws, and actually started punishing these losers for their crimes.
But no... instead we spend ten times as much money enforcing punitive laws to support corporate welfare, punishing people who have done nothing wrong, all because a bunch of uncreative morons want government mandated cashflow for themselves, even if it means destroying our freedom.
How about when people are irresponsible, we let them take the fall instead of bailing them out? How about instead of coddling a murderer and spending millions caring for them and trying to "figure out why they did it", we instead just shoot them and spend the money helping the victims?
There are a lot of solutions to violence that don't involve the undesirable, unattainable, and idiotic disarmament of free citizens.
There is not one single case in history where you are correct. 100% of them show the exact opposite of your utopian fantasy.
Criminals in areas where guns are illegal trade them on the black market, from overseas, or simply set up shop and make their own.
Or, shockingly enough, since no one is armed... they just use other weapons to do the same damn thing to their victims.
Unarmed "citizens" are slaves, always have been, always will be.
Notice that the top homicide rates are for countries with some of the most strict gun control laws. Looks to me like you proved the opposite of your stated point.
Not so shockingly, you are full of shyte. You are just repeating the same mythological bullshit you've been spoon fed and are dumb enough to believe.
In nearly ever jurisdiction where guns are banned, two things happen: increase in crime and loss of freedom. The criminals are still armed, only now they have little to fear from their victims.
Guy kills several people with a gun, and the idiots in our news media say "Gunman kills XYZ...".
However, see a guy kill a dozen with a knife, and it says "Man attacks shoppers..." or some other low key heading, and they don't mention the weapon used at all. Why aren't people who kill with knives called knifemen, or like the german guy who killed a couple dozen with a baseball bad not called batmen or clubmen?
Answer: because guns are used by citizens limit the power of government, and you have a lot of little dictators in government who can't handle the idea of an armed population telling them "Hell no", and enforcing it with lethality.
It has nothing to do with safety or concern over dead children, and the laws won't help any of that anyway. Never have, never will.
Its very simple: the people in power are corrupt and rotten, and the gun is a particular tool that can take them out of power or prevent an increase in their power.
Obama can squeeze out fake tears all day long, but the fact is he is only crying because we are still armed and it limits his power. That's why he and a lot of other little Hitlers and Stalins want to disarm the population.
A disarmed person is a slave.
Because unless your needs are pretty basic and you are willing to put up with various issues like lack of polish and features, you can't recompile "90% of what you need".
You cannot just "recompile" tons of software people need and use every day. I'd be thrilled if Linux could do half of what I need, but it can't.
Even when I have the source, that does not mean I can use recompiled versions. They may not work well, be poorly performing or debugged, or be missing features on the less mature platform. In fact, that's virtually guaranteed.
Open source is great, but the code base lacks a lot of critical, fun, and well polished applications that people use all the time, and most of the time the community is very hesitant to put in the work needed to make it so.
I would love it if everything I needed was open source and also high quality, but that's just not true, and probably won't be for years.
You are exactly right, and since atheists can't prove their position, we should not tolerate them.
Can we supply enough diesel to meet demand? Isn't it produced as a byproduct of gasoline production? What I read suggests that we could not keep up with demand.
The example I recently read about was a 1985 small car, 4 cyclinder, typically got around 24mph highway. 0-60 acceleration well over 15 seconds.
Fast forward to 2012 and you can buy a car with 600HP and a 5.9L engine, 0-60 in 3.5 seconds... and it gets 24mph highway.
Gee, do you think that possibly... being several times the size of any other vehicle and highly visible might help?
Also, some trucks can accelerate faster than a Chevette... just sayin'...
I drove one of those and there are a lot of places where you cannot safely merge, especially if hills are involved.
Sure we don't "need" race cars, but 200HP in a heavy car (all cars meeting current safety regs are heavy) is not even remotely overkill.
Low performance gets people killed all the time.
Wow, what an ignoramus you are. I'd almost be willing to agree if by religions you also included zealous atheists and other religions, but I bet you don't (yes, atheists, despite the name, preach, evangelize, and are zealous often far above and beyond any of those awful religious people, so let's ban them too).
A good number of these religious people you say are obviously very weak intellectually created the world's technology, including the technology allowing you to spout your ignorance here. Really, you'd appoint a guardian to people like that? The ones that made everything you depend on?
A smoker blows smoke into the air your breathe, and they stink, and their horrid breath carries the little bits of their excessive phlegm and smoke particles to you.
Peanut eaters don't blow peanuts all over me.
Yes, but the aircraft are not glued together in such a way they are impossible to repair.
The Apple/Airplane analogy would be what if the Boeing 787 had its engines glued to the wing so that if it needed an engine overhaul, you either had to replace both wings, or the entire aircraft.
...but let's face it, some of us have no interest in management, or consulting. That's why, after a 15-year career in software development, I turned to teaching. And if you're laughing because I'm advocating teaching as an alternative career, you miss my point: Sometimes getting out of the field is a viable option. I grew tired of lining the pockets of CEOs and PHBs and gutless business owners who simply ran their businesses into the ground, businesses built partially on my hard work. Sometimes you have to take a step back and ask yourself "What exactly have I done for society these past years?" Chances are, if you're a software developer at a "large investment bank," not a hell of a lot.
Good points.
I have found that working for things I believe in, generally has also helped my survival a great deal. Most of the time when I am looking for work it is in military, research, or industry. I believe they are foundations of this country and need help, and whenever I work in those fields I'm generally happy. Yes there is all kinds of bullshit to deal with, but you get that wherever you go. Most of the shops I work for, they are generally focused and have well known goals and needs.
Every time I have strayed from that past, I've been fairly unhappy. In a couple of places I made a six figure income, and I was absolutely miserable. Management by whim, customers internal and external who were clueless but drove everything, managers who got raises by screwing everything rotten.
NOTE: I'm not saying you have to focus on those three areas to be happy and productive, that's just my particular choice, and doesn't include a few other qualifiers I have developed over the years. It just happens that much of the time those shops are in the "let's just get work done" category and I find they work better for me.
Wherever you try to apply for work, think long and hard about actually doing the work and what you are contributing to. That will tell you far more about how happy you will be and how secure you job will be than pay scales. Also remember that even seemingly minor differences in benefits can end up being worth 5, 10, 20K US dollars a year in pay. I took a job for $20K less than what I was making recently, but the benefits are worth over 25K more and all of them are cheaper and less money out of my own paycheck.
Honestly, that is the worst advice I have heard in a long time. Management is fine if you like it but the argument that at years old means you should be in is just dumb and insanely counterproductive.
If you are 25 and have the talent to manage, do it.
If you are 65 and a good programmer or system administrator, do it.
I realize a lot of companies share this view, but that's because a lot of companies suck, and its one of the biggest causes of organizational dysfunction in the world.
I have always wanted to learn and use LISP, however I find it very hard to use the actual tools. C tools are very easy to use, and producing compiled code is very easy.
Isn't part of the reason LISP isn't widely accepted because it is difficult to work with outside its now largely dead native environments?
Just finding out how to produce standalone executables can be an exercise in frustration. I once did finally work out how to do it in Common LISP, but the process was ugly, cumbersome and the results were big and slow.
I have rarely found the LISP community to be much help. My questions about how to use it for common programming jobs was met with "just start and stop your code in the LISP environment (manually)" or "there is a compiler that will do what you want and its only $5000".
Public health care similar to socalled "Obamacare" is commonplace in most of Europe, where the costs are lower and quality is higher (citation needed? LMGTFY). Why would costs rise and quality decrease in the US? Is there something inherently wrong with the US that they can't make this work as well as in Europe.
Does it work well in Europe? Or are they being subsidized by nations like the USA? Even if you don't believe that, isn't Europe currently and rapidly going bankrupt?
World shipping lanes... they work, correct? But why? Is it because how Europe handles them is working? Or, is it because the USA and a tiny few other nations do the bulk of the fighting and funding to keep the shipping lanes open? The world does very little but benefits greatly.
In any case, I don't see our changes to healthcare working over here because they don't address the fundamental problems with our system. In the past we had a pretty good system, and it was 100% private. I don't see the logic in going 180 degrees from a successful period being the way to get back to that period's success.
Also it seems to me that at fundamental problem we have is we use insurance improperly. It used to be something you bought only for emergencies, bills you could not afford to pay. Even when I was a kid, my family paid almost all medical care out of pocket, only using insurance when necessary. Almost any medical services we needed were affordable and competent, and I grew up poor. It was also 100% private.
Then over the years policies were instituted forcing insurance to start paying for nearly everything. I'm not sure how anyone can be surprised that costs skyrocketed and the system became corrupt. We have of course made some amazing improvements in medical knowledge and technology, but in many ways the service level and staff competency is much lower now, and almost nothing is affordable out of pocket any more. Even simple checkups now cost more than what used to be emergencies.
It seems to me we have some fundamental problems: misuse of insurance, massive corruption, legal system abuse and dysfunction, and failed central planning. I don't see any system working until those issues are removed.
I can understand Linus' gripe... but likewise I understand nVidia and others' gripes with Linux.
Linus isn't talking about gaming, performance or anything else like that. The point is : nVidia ships a binary blob and an obfuscated source portion that needs to be built outside of the vanilla kernel. That is what Linus is talking about, nVidia's lack of cooperation with the kernel people at integrating their drivers into the main line kernel in a way that respects the project's goals and visions.
Why you people are discussing the performance when that is not at issue, I have no idea. It was all pretty clear to me what Linus meant.
nVidia does that because that's how they protect themselves.
Drivers for Linux suck because it doesn't have a valid ABI, and not even a very stable software API.
Fix that problem, the political bullshit, and the "let's change it just because we can" mentality, and you might see things change for the better.
My solution of the whole Linux desktop mess, which still exists though in slightly lesser form, was to get a Mac and be done with it.
My solution to speed issues was to use my remaining Linux/UNIX systems with plain window managers.
Linux desktop environments and applications are still an ugly mess even in 2012.
Millions play and it is easier to attack the messenger because it is anti male biased but I am telling you it is not. I have a friend who is a woman who plays to escape as well and I told her that her life is going to suck more unless she stops playing. We do not talk as much as a result :-)
As you write it above, your statement is wholly unfounded. If you made a blanket statement like that and she stays away from you, more power to her. I suspect you left a lot out, or I hope so anyway.
I play DDO a lot, 90% of it with a good friend. She and I have both benefitted from it, its hardly making our life suck. We are both working professionals with careers that require a high degree of training and dedication. We play #1 out of friendship, and #2 to dump some stress from life. Our life will not suck less if we stop playing, so if your above statement is true, then it must be highly situational. It certainly is not true in general.
We both work hard and the game keeps us connected and let's us blow off some steam together. I have some friends which due to circumstance, I've not been able to see in person for many years now. Without things like online gaming, we'd have precious few moments of interaction, and I find my life made better by this.
Of course, I also drink alcohol, and don't have the problems of alcoholism. Personal responsibility is the bigger issue, no matter how much we try to come up with convenient excuses and other things to blame our mistakes on otherwise.
You could do the same with a lot of computer software for desktop/laptop as well. Unfortunately most of it is utter garbage or very expensive, or severely limited on the platforms it will work with.
There is a heavy need for good software but what is out there isn't great.
The problem is that 4th Edition is horrible in every other way. Its grossly overpowered and overcomplicated once you leave the basics.
THAC0 and those old rules were pretty horrible from a usability standpoint, but we've gone too far the other way. The abstractions don't even make sense for high fantasy any more.
3.5 and Pathfinder are the last really playable versions to me, though 4th edition rules will probably work well for the upcoming Neverwinter MMO.
If you want to introduce people to RPGs, you can also consider the D6 system. Its simpler than just about any of them and fast to learn, leaving the game largely up to the players.
Harn... Harnworld and Harnmaster...
Give that a try. Very realistic combat. No silly hit points or armor class. Instead you get things like "your opponent strikes your upper shoulder, piercing the leather but not the underlay, leaving a heavy bruise on your upper arm." Your skills are not arbitrarily assigned, to gain them you must practice and use them. No levels, no hit points, skills are raw numbers. Much like real life, even a very skilled fighter can be killed by a six stone weakling that hits you right, or maybe you just get an infection. Of course, in the interest of fun, its fairly easy to modify things so you are fairly "heroic" as long as you don't do stupid things... in which case well... your character should die.
If you want to go in another direction where long-term role play of lives happens, try Ars Magica, where games typically cover many years.