I was reading about using the Arduino as an ISP/ICSP. What wondered me, is the complexity of the wiring... And looking at the schematic of a board, I guess using a 1:1 1pin header cable between both boards ICSP connectors would do the trick just as good. Many people have 6 (or 10) pin header connectors/cables laying around anyway, so why don't show that option?
The problem is that you have to connect the reset pin of the target to another (general i/o pin) of the Arduino serving as the ISP. So you could use a 6 pin-6 pin connecter with one wire spliced to go somewhere else, but that's more complicated to show in a simple illustration.
I was hoping they put a 28pin pdip and 40 pin pdip socket to the megaisp shield and add crystals and other stuff to make it a fully working avr programmer.
ISP page could really use some improvement indeed.
It would be nice to list proper SCK/MISO/MOSI pins to use for every official Arduino board as a programmer and as the target, or link to an article that does (which I haven't found to exist).