The newbie restrictions are indeed archaic, there are better ways to handle spammers and newbies, like reputation systems, Ripple style trust (if your friend spams, you get banned too!), pay-per-account, etc. Theymos already claims he's working on a replacement that will eliminate the need for the newbie jail. In the meantime, try http://reddit.com/r/Bitcoin as that's where actual conversation happens.