All I want to know is why we have to get this far in order to understand the incoherence of technology vendor monoculture? I still don't even understand why any productivity seeking web user would have IE as their desktop browser (at all, bar the littany of ill served IE only sites, Yuck!).

Mozilla, FireFox, Opera et al. are all viable alternatives. Even better, get with the Web 2.0 program using the emerging pool of RSS Readers / Web Browser hybrids (note: unfortunately many sill use IE for browsing by default).

What really gets to me is that the fact that once the ill perceived destruction of Netscape was achieved, Microsoft went into predictable mode mode with IE (nothing to kill so why innovate, I mean we only innovate to kill products that potentially re-route users away from the Windows Lock-in / technology cul-de-sac etc..).

Internet Explorer Frame Injection Vulnerability “Mark Laurence has discovered a 6 year old vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer, allowing malicious people to spoof the content of websites. The problem is that Internet Explorer doesn’t check if a target frame belongs to a website containing a malicious link, which therefore doesn’t prevent one browser window from loading content in a named frame in another window. Successful exploitation allows a malicious website to load arbitrary content in an arbitrary frame in another browser window owned by e.g. a trusted site. Secunia has constructed a test, which can be used to check if your browser is affected by this issue. This vulnerability is similar to an old vulnerability fixed by MS98-020 in Internet Explorer version 3 and 4. The vulnerability has been confirmed in a fully patched Internet Explorer 6 running on Microsoft Windows XP. Other versions of Internet Explorer may also be affected. Solution: Disable the following security setting: ‘Navigate sub-frames across different domains’. [Tools/Internet Options/Security tab in an Internet Explorer windows or Internet Options/Security tab from Control Panel.] Do not visit or follow links from untrusted websites.”