I'm new to programming: which language?

As the title says, I'm new to programming, I've only ever done basic and slightly advanced  Windows DOS language, and I know that is pretty limited in what it can/can't do. I hear that CL/Scheme are the main languages on this board, but I've also heard that they're old and obsolete, someone even told me that Lisp can't call external programs, is that true?

A couple people told me Python was a good language to learn, and I know a lot of programs are written in C/C++, and I've heard of some olders ones like COBOL, FORTRAN, Haskell, and a few others.

I've heard of these dynamic and static typing things, and I believe strong and weak typing, can anyone explain the difference? I've been involved in computers for most of my life, and I think it's time to advance my computer skills, and I could think of no better place than 4chan's /prog/, namely because I don't know of any other places, so....

Can /prog/ help me?

Java is an excellent language to start off with: it's part of the popular C family (which will make future learning easier), is slightly clearer to code in than with C, and is heavily used in the industry.
Its main criticism is that it can sometimes be a little slow when put under heavy strain, but that's not a concern for what you'll be using it for.

C++ - templates and pointers and much more confusing shite that I'm sure makes it a wonderful language.
Ruby - the Pokemon of the programming world. Everyone loved it, no one uses it.
Python - beautiful language, the business world hates it.