That would be an ideal world, and I agree that safer languages definitely do make sense there, but the big question is how do we get there.
> That's the wrong place to attack the problem.
Then what do you think is the - currently practical - way to attack the problem?
I think there is a bit of misunderstanding I created in my original post; I'm not completely against security and hate buggy software as much as anyone, but only pointing out that we rely on insecurity for many good things and freedom we have today, and thus we should give more consideration to the implications of using more secure languages before they get to the point of becoming so popular that there is no turning back. They're just such a good fit to be used in trusted computing/DRM systems, and that's what scares me the most.
That fear is akin to governments being afraid of cryptography. The genie's out of the bottle, we know how to make better languages/development environments. The question becomes, do we deliberately hobble ourselves or do we accept the reality and move forward. The "enemy", if they're rational, will be moving towards these better tools. On the other side of the fence, we should as well. Otherwise we're leaving our own code and systems open for abuse.
Ultimately, the only way to correct this is the active encouragement of DRM-free content. The active development of FOSS software. The active development of open-specced hardware. Let's take these tools that let us develop things with fewer errors (or where errors are made blindingly obvious) and make this free world we want.
> That's the wrong place to attack the problem.
Then what do you think is the - currently practical - way to attack the problem?
I think there is a bit of misunderstanding I created in my original post; I'm not completely against security and hate buggy software as much as anyone, but only pointing out that we rely on insecurity for many good things and freedom we have today, and thus we should give more consideration to the implications of using more secure languages before they get to the point of becoming so popular that there is no turning back. They're just such a good fit to be used in trusted computing/DRM systems, and that's what scares me the most.