No-one should be having Java (not even serve side) allowed and running at the moment. There's way too many bugs in it and there's wild exploits and hacks.
The exploits use java browser plugins to infect your JRE.
So turn off Java plugins (applets) in your browser and you should be relatively safe.
Well at least as safe as using flash, javascript, python ruby etc.
The exploit does not directly effect:
javascript, serverside struts, apache, eclipse, Open Office or Minecraft.
that said the error message might have had something to do with server side upgrading in order to fix non existent exploits because management decreed it.