You are right, download shouldn't run automatically. And actually, no browser intentionally allows downloading programs automatically.

Unfortunately, internet browsers are a quite complex piece of software which connects to a lot of other complex libraries, and each of these software elements may contain security vulnerabilities, used by exploits that download and run malicious code. The idea is this: some hacker find out about a security bug in some windows library (which could be a result of things like a buffer overflow bug), such as the library that displays some file format (WMF, AVI etc.), ActiveX, JavaScript etc., and then embed in a website some file that uses this exploit ( windows metafile, embedded video etc.). Such vulnerabilities are being discovered all the time, and Microsoft keeps releasing new security patches that fix these bugs, but from the moment the bug is discovered to the moment you download a security update there is enough time where your computer is exposed to such exploits.

I don't think it is realistic to expect software to be free of such vulnerabilities. Every OS got them. Fortunately for people using other OSes such as Linux, it is not targeted as much as Windows by hackers because it is not as common as a desktop OS, and the fact that most users do not run as admins also helps to reduce the potential damage of a malware. I believe there are other ways to reduce exposure to such exploits: for example, use data execution prevention and use a sandbox to isolate the browser and all the libraries it uses from the rest of the system. However, you need to design the system from ground up to be able to implement these measures properly.

IMHO, you should still be much better off with an N900. The N810 is already quite old and have a lot of annoying limitations. It got only 128MB of RAM, which is a major limitation. You can easily get out of memory with the N810 if you browse a heavy web site, and multi-tasking is limited as well. In addition, it got a relatively slow CPU, no OS support for GPU accelaration, 2GB internal storage and a limited size of system space for installing apps.
The N900 got 256MB RAM and 1GB virtual memory (with swap space), faster CPU, 32GB internal storage and up to 2GB for applications.

The N810 have a larger screen, which can be an advantage in some cases, but it is also bigger and heavier.

Better go with an N900. You can find used/refurb units for quite cheap prices on ebay.

So he's just a guy trying to make a living. And he made this little experiment where he tried to stop his sheet music from being traded, and it seems like he was successful doing this. But then the more important question he did not address is: how did it help him to make a living? How much more does he make now that his work is more difficult to find online? Did it actually help him to make a living?

I guess the answer is: no.

This is a strawman. Most people do not believe in a "right to consume". This is not about consuming but about the futility of turning art into a scarce resource that have to be bought and consumed.

There is nothing inherent about art that makes it a scarce resource. There is nothing inherent that makes it a "product". We, as a society decided few centuries ago to convert art into a product as a way to encourage people to create. It my have been a good idea at the time, but now that art no longer have to be distributed in a tangible form, it outlived its purpose and have to be replaced with a better mechanism.

So no, there is definitely no "right to consume", and I don't think there should be any, but then again, art shouldn't be consumed at all. It should be experienced and shared in order to enrich our culture. We should definitely encourage people to create art and ideas and should reward people for doing so, but a mechanism of artificial scarcity is not the right way to do it.
 

A lot of details do not add up in this story.

First, how did they get to 20 years in prison? Possession of child porn is a misdemeanor in California, and he can get only 1 year for that (And AFAIK, the same is true for the federal law). He could get 20 years only if he distributed (or possess with an intent to distribute) child porn material.

Something tells me there are some missing facts in this story, and I guess the prosecution had a lot of other incriminating evidence in addition to those accidentally downloaded CP files.

Nah, I would recommend Gentoo to this guy. After all, he did say:

Given that this is Slashdot, I would definitely go with the first explanation. RTFA? Who the fchk RTFAs? And btw. AP got it's share of love from Slashdot in the past, when they started sending out DMCA take down damands to bloggers who quotes AP stories even though it was a fair use.

And most likely, this paper was never peer reviewed before accepting it to the conference.

I tried to find out some info about CSSE, and apparently the 2008 conference was the first conference ever. This conference takes place in China, and even though it calls itself an "international conference", it is not very international, and most presenters are either from china or a neighboring country.

Furthermore, it has a very wide list of subjects, too wide ... probably any subject in computer science. It close to impossible to get reviewers for one conference that would be qualified to review any possible subject.

My guess is: this conference was either not reviewed at all, or its review process was a joke and everything got accepted (probably less submissions than what they expected). I've looked at the paper and it is sufficient to read the abstract in order to understand this paper is a fake.