I wish
I was smart enough to develop a website with all the usefulness and functionality of a site coded with html, css, ajax, javascript and php in html, css and php only.....
One that would satisfy the expectations of the consumer user.
Unpatched Java installations may have helped spread the malware responsible for the recently uncovered "Red October" cyber-spying campaign, researchers at Seculert have revealed. Kaspersky Labs first disclosed the existence of Red October on Monday, claiming that the program had been responsible for attacks on systems in …
Once again, the problem is people running untrusted code in a trusted environment, even if it's accidentally. You don't run client side code unless you know the source. Java applications are no more inherently dangerous than applications written in any other language. The same risks apply to running Javascript, ActiveX, VBS, or any other client side code within a browser.
> the problem is people running untrusted code in a trusted environment,
That's the point - the java plugin is meant to be sandboxed - it's due to bugs that programs escape the sandbox,
Similarly, all the others are meant to be restricted in what they can do, or again, sandboxed from the main system