I''ve got some friends who want to know how to program in C\C++. Are there any good tutorials out there that can turn an absolute Know-nothing-about-programming person into a decent game programmer?

yeah, tons and tons, just search around.
i dunno about anyone else but books seem to work better and faster for me though. There are lots of good books including Beginning Visual C++ from the company Wrox (www.wrox.com i think).