Is it possible to quickly kill existing patents?

Question: My biggest fear is that all the really valuable and very broad patents that qualify as crap have been granted, and we're merely in the midst of the "long tail" of patent applications. How can we fix the problem of the 30,000+ patents that have the potential of ruining startups? Is there a speedy, non-lawyer-required way of killing companies' patents by proving they're obvious or that they already exist?
Comment: There is a new patent invalidation crowdfunding platform : http://unpatent.co
Answer: No, there is no way that is quick and inexpensive. Patents are presumed valid and the least difficult way to try to knock one down is an ex parte reexamination. Anyone can file a request based on submitting published documents and an explanation as to how they apply to which claims, and $6000. The patent office gets 3 months to decide if there is a "significant new question of patentablity". If not you get your $6000 back. If so, they proceed to examine it again, but with "special dispatch". At the end a reexamination certificate is issued that might say everything is fine, some claims are changed, some or all claims are gone. The requestor does not get to participate after sending it in.
No lawyer is technically required. You could draw it up yourself, or you can use a registered practitioner. That includes patent attorneys and patent agents. If one were actually spending $6000 in USPTO fees, another few thousand to get it done professionally seems wise.
Answer: My idea was to create an online system which allows defendants which are accused of patent infringement to find other defendants in the same situation, being sued or threatened to be sued. This would allow several defendants to combine resources and take down some of the patent trolls. Perhaps it could be an addition to this awesome website!
Crowdfunding and crowdresearching patent invalidation suits can really put a dent in the patent trolling industry.
Comment: Please please launch a kickstarter (or similar) for that and announce it here!
Comment: LOL....I'm being attacked by a troll so you had best patent your idea!
Comment: I realize this is old, but did you ever try this out or is there actually something online following your idea? Just curious.
Comment: It seams that your idea has been realized: https://unpatent.co
Answer: To add to Mr. White's answer, there is also inter partes reexamination, in which you can actively participate in the process.  Cost is higher, and each new submission requires additional fees.
Also, "another few thousand to get it done professionally" is a bit low. :-)  I suppose you could find someone to do the filing for cheap, but really, to do it professionally, you're talking five figures, and not necessarily low five figures.
Comment: Reexam's are handled by senior patent examiners and processed much like the examinations  done to grant or reject a patent in the first place. Interpartes reexams were a big step up in complication and legal bills. The AIA replace interpartes reexam with interparty review. They are handled by administrative law judges within the USPTO and are a quasi-litigation. Yes, that is very very expensive in legal bills.
Answer: Check the unpatent.co website. It's a platform for crowdfunding of campaigns against malicious patents.
Also check Unified Patents.
Comment: Thanks, Alex! I used to own `patents.rip` and had intended on creating this same thing. I never found the time to even begin, and had lost hope that such a thing would ever exist. I can't tell you how glad I am for this!
Comment: You are welcome. There is also a [trollala.com](https://trollala.com/) website, but as I understand they are partnered together under [unpatent.co](http://unpatent.co/) project.


Is Gogeta super saiyan blue confirmed in the new Dragon Ball Super movie?

Question: There are many people talking about not only that they think Gogeta will appear in the new movie, but they are refering to a supposed tweet where a japanese animator said he's going to do Gogeta in the new movie. Does anyone know if this official? Supposedly the official release of this info was done in japanese. Any translation?
Answer:  Gogeta Blue hasn't been "confirmed" to appear in the DBS movie. However, it seems very likely that it might be the case. An animator Yoshihiko  Umakoshi, mentioned on a live NikoNiko broadcast that he was practicing Gogeta. While the above mentioned information is accurate, it has to be noted that Umakoshi's names isn't on the film credits. However, not all the animators working for the Dragon Ball Super movie have been named.When the new DLC (Extra Pack 3), was released for Xenoverse 2, on further Datamining, there was one character who had Super Mad Dance as a super and the Vanisher Guard evasive which are Gogeta's moves. Another character had the Gigantic Meteor Ultimate who is implied to be Broly. Hence, Gogeta Blue and Broly are being predicted to be the new characters that get released in Extra Pack 4, after the movie.Further information with regard to the animator and his comments can be read here.
Answer: No. Gogeta is not confirmed for the movie and likely will not be in the movie. There is a Datamine for Xenoverse 2 that implies there will be a new Gogeta and Broly character in the game but that's just it. It's only a video game. Dragon Ball Heroes has shown us SSJ4 Vegito. And other Dragon Ball Video Games have shown us SSJ4 Gohan, SSJ3 Broly, SSJ4 Broly etc. So using a Video Game to prove something is not always a good idea. And in September, there was an Animator, named Yoshihiko Umakoshi, who was interviewed on NicoNico. But that is actually all we know for 100% certainty. This interview aired live and was never recorded, so we have no way of going back to watch it to see what was said. The person who claimed Yoshihiko said he was drawing Gogeta for Dragon Ball (Note: The person claimed Yoshihiko said Dragon Ball, not Dragon Ball Super, there is a difference), is just a random person in Japan who is also a fan of Dragon Ball. It wasn't Yoshihiko himself who went on Twitter or anyone related to Dragon Ball Super/Toei Animation in any Official Capacity. Just a random Average Joe fan like the rest of us.
Comment: It has now been confirmed :)


Make individual attachments private?

Question: Is there any way to make individual attachments private similar to how a post can be made private? I've looked through various plugins but none really seem to do the job. They usually make all attachments private which I do not want.
Answer: You can try to put a Custom Field to the attachments and filter from there.
http://wpengineer.com/2076/add-custom-field-attachment-in-wordpress/

Make individual attachments private?


how can I get 50 (something) if you won't let me write one because I have not 50 'credits' I think?

Question: I heard a joke in "the vicar of Dibley" (most episodes do end up with one told by Dawn French, the vicar, to her not so bright friend...) And I could not understand it. I kind of found the answer here. But did not agree with some of the statements about the explanation. When I clicked on "Comment" I was told I did not have enough "Credits" may be! My question is how will I get these credits if I'm not allowed to write comments?
Comment: You get credits by asking and answering questions. Comments will not earn you any credits, even if they are up-voted.
Comment: Please link the question you are referring to. If the question is open and not "protected" you can post an answer instead if a comment. Answers that ate upvoted give their authors "rep" (credit/ reputation points)
Comment: Stack Exchange is **not** a discussion forum, so discussing answers is not welcome. Note that if you disagree with an answer, you can write your own (and you might get reputation awarded for it). The duplicate question covers the generalities. However, it appears in your case you should ask a new question, referencing the one you found and explaining why the answers don't help.
Comment: Stupid auto correct or fat finfers take your pick...
Answer: Reputation points are earned by asking or answering questions. When you do that, those posts can be voted upon by other users. When somebody votes for your answers or awards you a bountty, you gain some, and when somebody votes against them you or you vote against an answer (but not a question) you lose some. A vote for a question gets you five; a vote for an answer gets you ten; a vote against one of your posts loses you two and a voting against an answer costs 1. Less often you might get your answer accepted  by the questioner which gives you 15, or win a bounty from another user, at their cost, which can be awarded in increments of 50 up to a limit of 500.
Commenting is a privilege that you have to earn because we are focused on questions and answers, so we do not just want people commenting willy nilly. We want people to have some familiarity with the website so they know how to comment. You can read the full commentary guidelines here. The major ones are no answering in the comments (which is important, but often ignored), and to focus your comments primarily towards leaving constructive criticism, or leaving behind transient information which may be deleted later like relevant links to related resources.
Also you might do well to read as much of the help center as you can prior to contributing because we have many similar expectations which can catch users off-guard.


Should a child wash his hands before eating on Yom Kippur?

Question: I know that you're not allowed  to eat  or wash on Yom Kippur. But suppose a child (not obligated to fast) is going to eat bread - should he wash his hands before eating it?
Comment: related https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/909/759
Comment: are you asking about the laws of washing in general on Y"K ( http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/528963/jewish/What-is-the-procedure-for-one-who-must-eat-on-Yom-Kippur.htm last section) or is it about children and the necessity to teach a child to wach ( http://halachipedia.com/index.php?title=Netilat_Yadayim_for_a_Meal ) and/or the involvement of an adult incidentally in helping a child wash?
Comment: Welcome to Mi Yodeya! Thank you for sharing the question.
Answer: The Shulchan Aruch (OC 613:1) stresses that only bathing/washing for pleasure is prohibited on Yom Kippur. Elsewhere (Kesef Mishneh, Laws of Prayer 7:8) he quotes the Ran (R. Nissim) who states that any washing (on any fast) that is for a mitzvah one may wash as he typically would. In the case of washing for bread, many Rishonim are of the opinion that washing up to the wrist is obligatory (cf. Biur Halachah §161, end). Therefore, any person eating bread on Yom Kippur should wash as per the usual requirements of "netilat yadayim" - washing up to the wrists. This is the opinion of R. Ovadiah Yosef (Chazon Ovadiah, Yamim Noraim pg. 308 and Arba Ta'aniot pg. 292), R. Nosson Gestetner (Lehorot Nattan vol. 2 §42 no. 3), R. Shmuel Wosner (Shevet HaLevi vol. 8 §139; interesting to note, RSW doesn't even find it necessary to elaborate on the "obvious" answer), R. Shlomo Z. Aurbauch (Madanei Shlomo, Moadim pg. 91), R. Eliezer Y. Waldenberg (Tzitz Eliezer vol. 18 §17).
A minor's age makes no difference in the halachah. The above is applicable to any case where one is halachically allowed to eat (exempt due to sickness, age etc.).


Is it possible to logon to StackOverflow using a google apps account?

Question:
Possible Duplicate:
How to log in to SO using a Google Apps account

Is it possible to logon to StackOverflow using a google apps account?
On the logon page for stackoverflow, I put in https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/site-xrds?hd=example.com for the OpenID URL.  The browser takes me over to google apps to login. I login successfully, but when the browser returns to stackoverflow, the stackoverflow page gives me an error:

The OpenId Provider issued an
  assertion for an Identifier whose
  discovery information did not match.
  Assertion endpoint info:
  ClaimedIdentifier:
  ht tp://example.com/openid?id=123445671234567712345
  ProviderLocalIdentifier:
  ht tp://example.com/openid?id=123445671234567712345
  ProviderEndpoint:
  ht tps://www.google.com/a/example.com/o8/ud?be=o8
  OpenID version: 2.0 Service Type URIs:
  (unavailable) Discovered endpoint
  info: {}
Answer: I don't have any problems using a Google Apps account with Stack Overflow. I simply click the big Google logo on the SO login page to login.


Design models using adjusted or unadjusted stock prices (time series prediction)?

Question: I'm creating a predictive model for closing price of stocks (using neural network and support vector machines.). Is it appropriate to use adjusted prices or unadjusted prices for this prediction purpose? my inputs are technical indicators (+ lags of price) and my output is trend deterministic (1 if we have increase in price and down if we have decrease in price).
Answer: Whenever you are looking to estimate total return, you would use adjusted closing prices. If you are strictly looking for the future stock price, you would use unadjusted closing price. I assume, though, that you are looking to predict the value of holding a stock during a given period, so you would want to use adjusted prices. The only time I've used actual closing prices in a model was when a security's value is strictly based on the closing price as of a certain day and ignorant of any dividend payments made. Historical correlation/volatility and estimates of return use adjusted prices.


What is the Orthodox Jewish position regarding a criminal ban on abortion?

Question: I know that many Orthodox Jews oppose abortion - presumably because they see this as a religious requirement - but does Orthodox Judaism see it as required or preferable to support a secular law criminalizing this practice? Are there any differences between modern Orthodox Judaism and Chareidi Judaism with respect to this topic?
Comment: The on-topic question would be how has rabbinic authorities responded to secular laws that ban abortions in all cases. Attorneys for Agudath Israel have filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court on abortion cases arguing that where state laws banning abortion in all cases, including where the mother's life is in jeopardy, violate Jewish 1st Amendment rights. The briefs cite Jewish laws that make abortion mandatory in order to save the mother's life.
Comment: It doesn't seem like a duplicate to me. The other question is asking about the halacha as it relates to the abortion itself; this question is asking about the halacha as it relates to having a secular law about abortion.
Comment: Possible duplicate of [Is a Jew permitted to have an abortion?](https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/39015/is-a-jew-permitted-to-have-an-abortion)
Answer: Although Judaism prohibits abortion, including for non-Jews it doesn't necessarily prohibit all abortion. Certainly in the context of saving the life of the mother, abortion isn't only permitted, it is required.
That being the case, a question of a secular law which permits, but doesn't require or even sanction, prohibited behavior is much more of a political question, which will be heavily dependent on the political circumstances surrounding the question, potential adverse effects of the law, and how to approach it.
There is no single opinion on the matter, and although you could probably make a general statement that a Modern Orthodox Posek is more likely to be neutral to sympathetic to a legal situation permissive abortion than a Chareidi one, it cannot be said that there is a specific, clear, religious doctrine one way or the other, and I'm sure you will find exceptions in both directions to that general statement.
That is not to say that Judaism has nothing to say about the question. There are principles of Judaism at play here, besides the issue of abortion, there is also the issue of encouraging non-Jews to keep the Seven Noachide Laws. But any exact application is a specific Rabbinic ruling given the totality of the facts rather than any general Halachic statements one way or the other.
Answer: As noted in my answer to this question, abortion is generally prohibited, but is permitted in certain cases.  All opinions agree that one is permitted - perhaps even obligated - to abort if the mother's life is in direct danger due to the pregnancy - perhaps even up to actual birthing. If the mother is not in direct danger, but will have negatively impacted health, most opinions hold that abortion is prohibited, but there are opinions which find ways in which to permit it.
Comment: Please add the implication that certain secular laws go too far or ban cases that are permissible under halacha.


Toothpaste in the back-country and the principle of leave no trace

Question: I am a staunch proponent of leave no trace. I don't carry dish detergent (sand and small rocks work much better on stainless steel anyways,) and I don't use soap or shampoo, not even of the biodegradable kind (being smelly I have heard might even help with repelling mosquitos...) I do however use toothpaste, and am feeling pretty bad about it, since I leave a chemical behind in the wilderness. When I spit out my toothpaste, I attempt to spray it over a large area, to avoid creating concentrations of the chemical, and I avoid leaving it behind on fragile vegetation, but I would like to find an alternative that adheres more to the leave no trace philosophy. What are my options without sacrificing the health of my teeth on those multi-week treks?
Comment: It's all about balance and being reasonable. I personally abhor the idea of leaving trash (plastic containers, bags, beer cans, etc.) in the wilderness. But I don't see any problem at all things that basically are biodegradable/edibles/etc.
Comment: @MichaelMartinez On topic, it's why I like the baking soda approach. It's effective (as a dental cleaner), it's very environmentally friendly, it's light, and it's multipurpose.
Comment: Spit into a ziploc and carry it out?
Comment: I don't use toothpaste in the backcountry, just water and the brush, you can chew fluoride gum after if you're worried about your teeth getting brittle and crumbling after only a couple weeks.
Comment: @Frisbee: This might be better to do in chat? But to answer your question: we eat out of the pot, which gets heated and therefore sanitized.
Comment: @ShemSeger - what do you do with the gum?
Comment: @BobJarvis - Put it back in the wrapper and pack it out with the rest of my garbage.
Comment: @DudeOnRock totally with you. But notice that the first comment you got was to spit in a ziplock and carry it out.
Comment: @radpin: to be fair to user32116 though, I did ask for alternatives to spitting toothpaste on the ground and not how I can best minimize my impact on the wilderness... That might make for a good new question though!
Comment: Leave no trace is going a bit far if you are not sanitizing. So you go number 2 and don't wash your hands?
Comment: @Frisbee: correct. I use sticks and rocks instead of TP and never touch my business.
Comment: Even at home I make a practice of not touching my business and wash my hands.  So you sanitize dishes?  Cheers
Answer: Even for "multi-week" trips, brushing with water alone is not going to compromise your tooth health. The abrasive action of the brush does most of the work, and missing the flouride hit for a few days won't affect your teeth in the least. Plus, it saves weight. So, the best LNT option: don't use it.
If you MUST use toothpaste (or an alternative), try a few of these options:

Swallow it - pick up a toothpaste made for babies and children made with the explicit understanding it will be swallowed. (Even regular toothpaste says, "do not swallow more than used for brushing" which seems to indicate it won't hurt...)
Pack it out - If you are truly leaving no trace, then you are packing out your poop too right? So coordinate your tooth brushing with other trace-forming activities.
Spray it - The "broadcast spray" method has long been championed whereby you spew the toothpaste out in a fine mist so there is no "blob" of toothpaste to attract hungry critters. It does spread the smell, so do this FAR away from camp in bear country.
Dilute it - in some areas, the recommended method is to spit normally, then urinate on it so there is not a large gobble-worthy glob for some critter to munch on.

And remember, even if you are using baking soda, or other "natural" alternatives, these still need to be dealt with properly using one of the above methods. It is pretty gross to arrive in a well-camped area and see white minty smears on all the vegetation regardless of whether it's "natural" or not.
Comment: +1 "`abrasive action of the brush does most of the work`", most people don't know or forget this.
Comment: It's certainly your position to have, but I don't see a scientifically sound reason to a gram of baking soda spit into the dirt and mixed up with your foot as something bad. Rain water is a weak acid that quickly hastens the breakdown of sodium bicarbonate; it's just not empirically relevant in even a high traffic area.
Comment: Whoa, look who finally crawled back out of the woods, where have you been @LBell?
Comment: @radpin It's not "something bad" but it is "a trace" which we are trying to leave none of ;). And, until it rains even baking soda will leave a white smear if not properly delt with.
Comment: @ShemSeger Ha! Haven't needed to procrastinate in a while...
Comment: *And remember, even if you are using baking soda, or other "natural" alternatives, these still need to be dealt with properly using one of the above methods* : Not necessarily.    http://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/9346/3545
Comment: If you use the "baby-toothpaste and swallow" method, note that the main difference is *much* less fluoride compared to normal toothpaste.  So this isn't an option your reasons for not using water alone is fluoride.
Answer: Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). It's naturally occurring, and to get a level of toxicity to animals you would need to get to 450mg per liter. Unless you're operating a mine or using literally tons of the stuff, it's quite safe and you'll never get near that. From a 2008 USGS study:

Chronic toxicity was observed at concentrations that ranged from 450
  to 800mg NaHCO3/L (also defined as 430 to 657 mg HCO3-/L or total
  alkalinity expressed as 354 to 539 mg CaCO3/L) and the specific
  concentration depended on the sensitivity of the four species of
  invertebrates and fish exposed.

At temperatures around 100f, it rapidly disolves into sodium carbonate, carbon dioxide, and water. And that's without interaction from other chemicals, which will happen naturally, and hasten the decomposition (especially any acid). Rain water is generally acidic, so rain in any quantity breaks down baking soda very quickly (like in minutes).
Specifically related to teeth cleaning, a 2008 study had this to say:

The collective results from the five controlled clinical studies on
  over 270 subjects reported in this paper, consistently demonstrate
  that Arm & Hammer baking soda dentifrices enhanced plaque removal
  effectiveness of tooth brushing to a significantly greater extent than
  the non-baking soda dentifrice products.

Another study of the same year and in the same journal states:

The results of this study indicate that the baking soda dentifrice was
  more effective than the non-baking soda, antimicrobial dentifrice in
  plaque removal after a single tooth brushing, and in maintaining
  significantly lower plaque levels during a four-week period of twice
  daily, unsupervised tooth brushing.

Sodium bicarbonate always works as a dish cleaner and antacid. I take a few ounces with me on every trip to cover all those bases.
For tooth brushing, just wet your tooth brush, put a small pile on the bristles, and go to town. It doesn't taste the best, but you get used to it.
Comment: Nitpicking a bit here, but the thermal decomposition of sodium bicarbonate won't actually make it any less harmful to the environment. (In fact, sodium carbonate might potentially be a bit more harmful, being more strongly alkaline.) But yes, NaHCO3 is pretty harmless stuff unless you start dumping it out by the bucketload (in which case the biggest issue is likely that you may locally raise the soil / water pH and sodium content).
Comment: @IlmariKaronen rain water is generally slightly acidic; the breakdown in a natural environment is going to be ridiculously fast, and we're talking about amounts in the *1g* range. The study referenced above puts that toxicity at 430 backpackers spitting their toothpaste, if all of it was spit out, into 1 liter of water, and *then* getting to toxicity.
Comment: Sure, I was just trying to point out that the thermal decomposition reaction you mention is pretty much a red herring. There's really no need to even mention it. It's relevant if you're using the sodium bicarbonate to bake bread, sure, but not if you're spitting it out onto soil.
Answer: There are some alternatives of toothpaste in ancient India as a part of YOGA.
Try Teeth cleaning twig : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teeth_cleaning_twig
DANTA MOOLA DHAUTI

The Sanskrit word danta means 'teeth', dhauti means 'wash' and moola
means 'root'. Therefore this practice is concerned with cleaning the
teeth and gums.

Utensils
In India today the traditional method of cleaning the teeth is by means of a twig from a neem tree. The twig is usually about fifteen centimetres long and half a centimetre thick and it has good alkaline and astringent properties. The end of the stick is chewed until it forms bristles. These are then used to brush the teeth and gums. Both chewing the end of the stick and using it as a brush makes the teeth and gums strong and clean. After use the stick is thrown away.
This method is probably impractical for most people. If this is the case, then use a soft bristled brush to clean the teeth and try to clean the brush as often as possible. The gums should be cleaned with the index finger making a hard, rubbing motion over both the inner and outer gums. You should try to clean your teeth at least twice every day, and even better after each meal.
Dentifrice
The important qualities of a dentifrice are that it is sufficiently abrasive to remove ingrained stains on the teeth, germicidal to destroy bacteria, as well as being able to wash the teeth and gums.
The ancient yogis always made their own tooth powder out of catechu, alum, myrobalan and the ash of burnt coconut shells in the proportion 1:6:1:2. However, these substances are not readily available and so most of us will have to stick with the toothpastes of today, the best of which are generally available at ayurvedic pharmacies, health and macrobiotic food stores. Additionally, some excellent dentifrices are wood ash or lemon juice which can be applied on a brush, or the rind of a lemon which can be rubbed up and down on the teeth and gums. This is a particularly good method of removing tarnish from the teeth.

Source : http://www.tranquilitytraining.com/2010/hatha-yoga-danta-dhauti/
Interesting Blog: http://myplasticfreelife.com/2011/06/verdict-on-neem-chew-stick-toothbrushes/
Also read this: eco-friendly-toothbrush
Comment: Fascinating read! Thank you for adding this; I learned something today. :o)
Comment: @Jonathan Landrum You're welcome, This is ancient method of cleaning the teeth, widely used by significant Indians still today.
Answer: You can also use Miswak, then you don't need to cary a tooth paste along but still have medicinal benefits, instead of having to use just a toothbrush with only water (although there is no harm in that either).

The miswak (miswaak, siwak, sewak, Arabic: سواك or مسواك) is a teeth cleaning twig made from the Salvadora persica tree (known as arak in Arabic). A traditional and natural alternative to the modern toothbrush, it has a long, well-documented history and is reputed for its medicinal benefits.

That way you leave no trace. Only some tiny bristles might be left over which themselves are from a tree so they cant be harmful for other trees.
Answer: Brush without paste. You do not need toothpaste. You get the minty freshness, you get fluoride, you get additional abrasion, but none of those things are essential. Brushing is far more important than the toothpaste. I've been told by multiple dentists that although toothpaste can be helpful, it is completely unnecessary (you can get the fluoride from other sources, and it is not something your teeth need twice a day). Unless you're living outdoors permanently, your teeth will be fine with brushing and rinsing alone for a few weeks, easily.
Additionally, rinse with hydrogen peroxide a couple times a week. You could do it daily while camping if you wanted to. This was also advice given to me from a dentist. When used, hydrogen peroxide breaks down into oxygen and water, so it would be safe to spit out in the wild without leaving crazy chemicals everywhere. It is not used for teeth whitening, which is a common misunderstanding, but the hydrogen peroxide rinse is used to kill the bacteria in your mouth that lead to tooth decay, in case there is any left behind after brushing.
Answer: I prepare my toothpaste using this recipe, main ingredients here being baking soda and coconut oil. Positive parts: it works just as well as "classical" toothpaste, it is safer to swallow, ingredients are natural. Negative parts: it has a more fluid consistence, needs a somewhat heavier container to carry it around.
Answer: I would look into OraWellness. It's a mix of essential oils that comes in a  very small bottle, so it's nice and compact. You also only need 2-3 drops per use and works so well I can sometimes skip a cleaning or just use water as needed. The "fuzz" or plaque we accumulate on our teeth is delayed when using this. I tried this almost 1.5 years ago and it has completely replaced conventional toothpaste for me. It's a little pricey but its natural, light, effective and damn good.
Answer: Because Toothpaste is nothing else than some kind of polish, you could use precipitate chalk.
Or just brush with water.
For the fresh feeling just chew some spearmint leaves.
Answer: You could use "toothy tabs" tablets, sold by lush. The tablets are solid toothpaste. They consist chiefly of kaolinite, baking soda, and essential oils. Besides being non-toxic and biodegradable, they are also lightweight, small, and the packaging is plastic-free.
If you want to be 100% certain, you could just use baking soda or make your own tooth powder. Quoted from "trash backwards":

2 tablespoons Baking Soda
2 pipette stoppers-ful of liquid stevia (liquid stevia comes in glass jars with stoppers)
1/4 teaspoon organic peppermint flavor (It's a combination of sunflower oil and peppermint oil)
1/8 teaspoon organic mint extract

I suspect that even many conventional toothpastes do no harm to the environment (safe for their packaging). However, some contain "microbeads", tiny plastic balls that never rot and accumulate in plants and animals.
Answer: I agree mostly with LBell's answer: just using water to dislodge food debris is enough! However, I felt I should write against

Dilute it - in some areas, the recommended method is to spit normally, then urinate on it so there is not a large gobble-worthy glob for some critter to munch on.

Mammals, especially deer and goats, seek out the smell of ammonia because they source their salt from urine. I would recommend against mixing toothpaste with pee because it increases the chances of it being ingested! The best place to pee is on a rock face so that animals don't dig plants at their base and disturb soil in general.
Answer: Floss.  If you brush with water only and then floss, your teeth and gums will be OK for even a multi-week trip.  The dentist of @Henning advises flossing first, then brushing because "the dirt that you floss out from between the teeth is highly aggressive stuff that shouldn't remain on them."  Thus I suggest a vigorous brushing, then flossing, then a light brushing.
Pack out your floss!  Maybe add a pack of peppermints for a cleaner feel.
Comment: my dentist strongly advised against flossing *after* brushing your teeth, because the dirt that you floss out from between the teeth is highly aggressive stuff that shouldn't remain on them.
Comment: @henning  Interesting. Floss first, then brush?
Comment: yes, that's what she advised.
Answer: Stefansson proved once and for all that diet affects teeth more than brushing. His experiences with the Arctic Inuit were published in Harper's Magazine in 1935, but are also available here in three parts: I, II, III.
It's arguably the upside-down food pyramid that is responsible for lining dentists' pockets today.
Starch gunks up one's teeth and gets fermented to acid. If you're eating mostly meat and vegetables, brush with a little water and you should have no issues. It's the grains that bite.
Many indigenous people who never brush their teeth also never get tooth decay
Comment: Dogs don't leave toothpaste anywhere :)


What is a proper question for workplace?

Question: So I am extremely confused as to what is a proper question on workplace.  As far as I can tell, every question I've seen, closed or open, is either opinion based, seeking advice, or (somehow) considered company specific, can anyone give me a good example of an appropriate question for this stackexchange?
Comment: click here to find over 5,000 examples: [list of open questions with positive score](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3Ano+score%3A1)
Comment: @gnat I'd hazard a guess that quite a few of those questions would probably be closed if asked today. Some will have inevitably slipped through and a number of olders questions are probably off-topic under the current guidelines without getting a historical lock. In fact, unless this query is no longer functional, we only have [a single](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/search?q=hasnotice%3Atrue+is%3Aq+locked%3Atrue) historical lock on the site (hasnotice covers more than just historical locks).
Comment: The text for the "opinion" close reason says something like "Of course any set of answers will reflect their author's o opinions, but we believe that answers to this question will be less supportable with facts than is desirable, making it difficult to say what is a good or bad answer.  That makes the question one that is outside the scope of SE as a whole; it's really discussion rather than q&a, and as such should be moved to a site which is discussion oriented."
Comment: @Lilienthal I think this is the case when it's more productive to stick with the principle "innocent until proven guilty" and just fix occasional [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info) when these are discovered
Comment: @gnat True, but I just wanted to mention that not every one of those 5000 questions will be a proper question.
Answer: Here are some of the criteria I use for determining whether a question is suited to this site. Most of this is based on the help center guidelines and the close reasons specified on meta.
While this should go without saying, this is my interpretation of the guidelines. Whether a question is "proper" is decided by the community as a whole so you may not agree with all or even any of my criteria.
Useful
StackExchange is meant to be a Q&A repository for future use. Anything that is too specific to a particular situation or set of circumstances risks being useless to others facing a similar situation or problem.
But every question is specific to a personal situation, isn't it? Of course it is, but the point is that the question should be answerable when the particulars vary. We should be able to generalise the question so that the minute details don't matter.
In this vein, anything related to company policies or use of a company tool, procedure or resource is almost certainly not useful. Those are things to ask of your colleagues or support staff.
Answerable
Complaints and rants aren't questions so by definitions can have no answers which means that they don't fit our format. There should be a core question or goal in the post that can have practical answers.

Don't ask: "My boss constantly berates me and is making my life miserable."
Ask: "How can I get my boss to treat me with respect when we have no HR department?"

Note that in the first example the lack of a question mark is a typical give-away for rant questions.
Not Personal Advice
This is sort of a combination of the first two criteria. When you ask us to make up your mind for you, that's not something that will be useful to others and we can't really answer it with any authority: we don't know all the details. Unless you write us a ten thousand word essay chronicling your entire life there will be important details missing that only you can know.
What we can do, is guide people towards making their own decisions.

Don't ask: Should I get a doctorate if I want to go into videogame development?
Do ask: Is a doctorate useful for a career in videogame development?
Better ask: Can a Ph.D. have a negative impact on your career in the software industry?

Note that the second example is borderline and can likely be generalised to the third example. It's a potential duplicate of that real question.
Not a duplicate
Variations on a theme are not allowed and closed as duplicates. For a question to stand on its own, there should be critical differences that would invalidate good answers on potential originals. A lack of good answers is not an excuse for recreating a question!
Not Opinion-based
This is a tricky one and the one that's most up for interpretation. Variations on "Will this improve my chances?" and "What do X think about Y?" are likely all opinion-based. The main criteria is whether there's a "standard opinion" for a particular culture/industry/area.
For instance "Will coming in late affect my career?" could be seen as being opinion-based as some managers will care and some won't. However, in the US and many European countries being late to work (without flexible hours) will negatively affect your reputation in virtually every company. In other countries that's much less of a problem. When properly defined a question like this can be answerable and useful.
Of interest to the site
The question should relate directly to the concept of "navigating the workplace" to use the wording of the help center. Our site's userbase cannot be expected to answer legal questions where interpretation of the law is required. The intricacies of Kanban and Scrum are better suited to the Project Management site. User access control is something for the Security site.
We may wear many hats across the StackExchange network but you should imagine that everyone answering questions here is an HR manager and restrict yourself to topics they would be able to answer.
Comment: Good answer! While we could nitpick some of the specifics here, I think this is a great framework for considering questions. Thanks!
Comment: Nicely done!  Thank you for writing this up.
Comment: So how does this get codified as practice? From my small viewpoint, relative to other SE sites, workplace has far more closed questions, far fewer questions up for review, far more upvotes and answers to closed questions, and far less pushback on the OP to aid in framing the question in an appropriate way. There are also many with nearly identical answers, where a comment is far more appropriate, and high upvote counts on those duplicates.
Comment: @jimm101 The problem is that SE does not allow for codification. Users are free to use the site as they wish and it's an unfortunate truth that many of our users are reluctant to downvote or review questions and answers critically. This is partly due to the subjective nature of much of our content (there is usually no correct answer, everyone feels qualified to weigh in) and partly out of a genuine intent to help people with their issue even if it's not a good fit for the site. [...]
Comment: Workplace is one of the few sites where we don't deal with relatively minor problems like coding projects, educational questions or trivia but where people come with situations that can and will affect their livelihood and significantly impact their future. [parenting.se] is the only other site I know of and while I avoid it, the brief visits I've made gave me the impression that it has its own share of problems. And to clarify my initial sentence above: codification can't be done because SE relies on the community to decide. And while I agree that ours is too soft, I am only one voice.
Comment: Nice answer. In reply to some of the comments, don't you guys think it will find it's own balance? Or has already found a sort of balance? It's the internet, we can't dictate what people do or how they do it.


Why is semantic markup given more weight for search engines?

Question: This question follows directly from the part of an  answer of this question - Why would one bother marking up properly and semantically? .
I would like to understand why SEO techniques gives more weight to semantically correct mark up?
Answer: What does the semantic markup offer? A way for the machines to understand the data. What's a search engine? A machine.
Back in the days, the search engines just looked for the words in a page and showed the page when you search the keywords. However, this led to farm websites with thousands of keywords just to rank higher than anything else, but this wasn't a quality website.
So the search engines evolved, adding more and more to their algorithm in order to provide relevant results to the end-user.
And then, search engines added a new way for websites to tell what they are: semantic markup. When a spider sees a specific tag, it knows what it means. The word "meaning" has a lot of importance there.
Lately, SEO is not only about how to rank the highest. Sure, it's quite important, but it can be reached only through great content, internal links, backlinks, and a lot of work overall (semantic markup is also  a plus there, but it's not so much according to my experience).
There are other ways to be seen though: using semantic markup. Because Google can now link your result to a picture of your face, because it can also show a map of where your hotel is, because it can see your post is relevant to this date, etc. The point is not to be the highest ranked; it is about the visibility. Semantic markup is what allows your website to be visible on search engines.
Just try it: Google some hotel's name around your place: you'll get the phone number and a Google Maps with its location, although it might not be the first result. That's visiblity.
Answer: The text that the question refers to is based on a thorough confusion, rooted in the vagueness (or semantic obscurity!) of the slogan "semantic markup."
On one hand, "semantic markup" is markup that someone chooses to call "semantic", and this may mean anything that is not directly defined in terms of rendering. (The HTML5 drafts even try to make  semantic by redefining it.) Typically, this nowadays means favoring novelties like ,
,
.
On the other hand, there is metadata attached to elements using markup like microdata or microformats, i.e. using reserved class names or some new attributes tailored specifically for the purpose. Such metadata is recognized by some major search engines – it was more or less designed by them – under conditions that they do not disclose (but which appear to be currently restricted to major commercial sites and most popular social media or other community sites).
No factual evidence has been given about search engines actually paying the least attention to "semantic markup" in the first sense, which is far more commonly used.
Answer:
why SEO techniques gives more weight to semantically correct mark up ?

Your question is actually addressed in a reference to - Semantic HTML:

In 2010, Google specified three forms of structured metadata that their systems will use to find structured semantic content within webpages. Such information, when related to reviews, people profiles, business listings, and events will be used by Google to enhance the 'snippet', or short piece of quoted text that is shown when the page appears in search listings. Google specifies that that data may be given using microdata, microformats or RDFa. Microdata is specified inside itemtype and itemprop attributes added to existing HTML elements; microformat keywords are added inside class attributes as discussed above; and RDFa relies on rel, typeof and property attributes added to existing elements.
Answer:
I would like to understand why SEO techniques gives more weight to semantically correct mark up ?

Because (certain) search engines pay attention to semantic markup when fulfilling search requests.
SEO is a set of techniques that try to make your website rank higher than others in people's search results.  This is done by exploiting knowledge of how various search engines rank the raw search results.  If (say) Google takes semantic markup into account, then an SEO optimizer might add semantic markup to improve the relevance of a site or page.
A more salient question would be to ask why search engines like Google bother to pay any attention to semantic markup if people are exploiting it for SEO purposes.  Presumably there is enough useful / good semantic markup around to make it worthwhile ... and to counter the misleading / bad stuff that shonky SEO outfits might create.
Answer: For companies like Google information is money and the better their information is the more value it has. Pages with semantically correct mark up contain more and better information then pages without.
So if Google wants to promote page-makers to use semantic markup, the easiest way to do that is to rank pages with semantic markup higher.


Why didn't the crew detect the Alien inside of Kane?

Question: In the movie Alien the character Kane becomes an unwitting host to an alien parasite, which eventually kills him. Why was this parasite not detected after the face-hugger died and fell off? Was the Nostromo without any medical imaging systems? Or did they just not think to run any kind of scans on him after he was released?
Answer: Who says they didn't? Remember that the scanner was being run by Ash (who was Science Officer) who had something of a hidden agenda, even if he did detect it he wouldn't have said anything...
Comment: I just rewatched _Alien_ last weekend and I'm 99% certain Ash knew and hid it. In the scanning scene mentioned in the answer Ripley is talking with Ash about breaking quarantine and the monitor in the background clearly shows a black circular mass in what appears to be a chest scan. Ash turns off this display before Ripley gets a good look at it. He also shoos her away from the microscope and gives some flimsy answer about "needing to study it more" to understand what's going on. The overall feeling from the scene is that Ash knows more than he's letting on and Ripley distrusts/dislikes him.
Comment: @Mark: The one inside Ripley showed up on a scan in Alien 3. The only question then is if the technology from about 60 years earlier in the first movie was advanced enough to see it too (although even then Ash would just hide it).
Comment: That must be why I have all my medical work done by certified humans. Of course Burke doesn't make a good case for that in Aliens...
Comment: Additionally, we don't know enough about Xenomorph biology to know if they'd even *show up* on a scan.
Comment: @gnovice Even if they had the technology 60 years before, it may not have been equipment brought on the voyage. Additionally, the scans would probably have been run when he was brought back on board, when the organism would likely have been fairly small.
Answer: Ash knew about the embryo in Kane. He is studying it from a scan but when Ripley comes over he turns the screen off.

Ripley: It's amazing. What is it?
Ash: Why yes it is, um... I don't know yet.

You have to remember Ash is a synthetic and on the ship specifically to observe and under orders to get the lifeform back to Earth even if it means killing the whole crew who are expendable to the company.

"Bring back lifeform. Priority one. All other priorities rescinded."
Comment: Probably true, but can you provide some information to back this up?
Answer: Since an Alien can grow from chest-burster to full-grown 7' tall adult in around 8 hours, when the initial egg was planted, it might have been very tiny, and might have been too hard to see on a general scan.  And since the Alien is not made of bone, it's egg might consist of semi-transparent papery material that doesn't image well.
But more likely it was that Ash was hiding it.
Answer: In the final version of the shooting script (the one on which the film's novelisation was based) we see precisely why the alien wasn't detected in Kane's abdomen after the facehugger removed itself; because Ash didn't put Kane back through the Autodoc's X-Ray scanner, relying purely on blood, fluid and temperature tests to inform them about his condition.
You may wish to note that although Ripley had observed the eggs on the scanner, Ash wasn't able to get a good view of them (surprise, surprise) and had advised the captain that the "shadow" on Kane's lungs was likely caused by a malfunctioning X-Ray scanner head rather than a real object.
This supposed malfunction would easily explain his reluctance to use the scanner again should anyone ask, which they apparently didn't.

RIPLEY: What about Kane?
Ash turns back to the bunk. Studies the life support gauges. Kane
continues to breathe steadily.
ASH: Running a fever.  And still unconscious.  The machine will bring his temperature down. His vital functions are strong... who
knows, he may make it.
Alien: Shooting Script

To get Ripley's mind off Ash and vice versa, he turned the
conversation back to Kane. 'Unconscious and a slight fever. Anything
else?'
Ash studied readouts. 'Nothing that shows here. His vital signs
continue strong.'
'Long-term prognosis?'
Alien: Official Novelisation
Answer: Now since covenant came out we know ash knew the whole time. The Nostromo was bunk from the beginning with false pretenses. I believe he is looking at a slide of a "shock trooper" as David describes when going through his various creations.
Comment: Can you provided sources from the screenplay? Or a paraphrasing of a quote?


Intermolecular forces between carbon dioxide and water

Question: I'm wondering which intermolecular forces will exist between carbon dioxide and water. Instinctively, I would expect there to be only dispersion forces between the 2 molecules, because carbon dioxide is non-polar due to its linear shape. However, even though carbon dioxide is non-polar, it still contains dipoles. I'm curious if its possible that these dipoles in carbon dioxide will allow it to form dipole-dipole forces (or even H-bonds) with water. Could the partially negative oxygen atomspotentially accept a H-bond from water, even if carbon dioxide is non-polar?
Answer: According to the this PubChem data table for the physical and chemical properties of carbon dioxide, it contains two hydrogen bond sites (each of the oxygens). This largely accounts for the high solubility of $\ce{CO2}$ compared to that of non-hydrogen bonding compounds like methane, which has about $\mathrm{1/25^{th}}$ of the Henry's law solubility in water as does $\ce{CO2}$.


sandbox solution priviliges issue

Question: I have a sandbox solution for SharePoint 2013. (because it has to work in Office365) I have an eventreceiver that adds an item to a list. I don't want users to manually change that list, so I don't give them rights on that list. However the eventreceiver is executed with the users privileges. Giving the user no rigths to the list means the eventreceiver won't work, and run with elevated privileges is not allowed in the sandbox. What would be the best way to accomplish this scenario?
Answer: I see this is an old one, not sure if it's still an issue. Using code in Sandbox solutions isn't supported in SP2013, so I would lean away from this as much as possible. Code in sandbox solutions is backward compatible to support SP2010 solutions, but it has been deprecated in SP2013.
With that said, even if you were going to keep the code, you can't elevate privileges in sandbox solutions. I think your best bet will be to look at possibly using a workflow instead. Workflows in SP2013 can be "elevated" to run under the workflow publishers identity, which may solve your issue.

sandbox solution priviliges issue


Off-chain authorization system

Question: I'm working on a dapp and am running into a dilemma regarding how to balance trustlessness with the cost of transactions for users.
In order to reduce gas usage by users, I want to be able to able to delegate certain transactions to the contract owner (i.e., the contract owner address sends transactions that include the user's address as a parameter as opposed to transactions coming directly from the user and using msg.sender), however, the big sticking point is in ensuring that a user is who he claims to be so that one user who simply knows the address of another user does not generate fake transactions.
Here's a simple idea that I have to try to accomplish this:
Authorization Process
1) User first accesses the site with MetaMask and requests to begin authorization.  A request is sent to the contract owner's server that includes the user's public address.
2) The server generates a random string and records the string and user address in a database and sends the string back to user.
3) The user creates a password and, together with the string received from the server, creates a hash, which is then sent via a MetaMask transaction to the contract.  The contract records the association between the user's address and the hash in a mapping.
4) If necessary, the server listens for an event to indicate that the user has created a new mapping entry to associate his address with the hash.
5) After the previous steps are completed, the user can initiate transactions by sending requests to the server, which included the user's password as well as the other instructions necessary to complete the transaction.
6) When the server receives the transaction request and password in step 5, it can create a hash of the password and the secret string assigned to the user and then compare that to the hash mapped to the user's address in the contract.
7) Any functions delegated to the contract owner would include a modifier to restrict access to the contract owner.
Key Points

The password (or a pure hash of the password, not including the random string) is stored neither in the contract nor the contract owner's database
It may not be necessary to combine the random string with the user's password before hashing, but this provides an additional layer of security
The user could change his password at any time by repeating steps 1-3
If a user alters the hash mapped to him outside of the above process, the server will not allow him to delegate transactions (his fault)
Impersonating the user in server requests would require 1) knowing the user's address and 2) knowing the user's password.  This information could not be obtained by looking at previous transactions.

My knowledge of authorization patterns is still in the development stage, so apologies in advance if this has any glaring holes.
Comment: You may want to look into this solution, as an alternative to password use: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/a/58007
Answer: Given the problem that you describe, you may want to look at the Gas Station Network to see if this meets your needs:
https://blog.openzeppelin.com/gsn-the-ultimate-ethereum-onboarding-solution/
For more information on the Gas Station Network please see the OpenZeppelin documentation: https://docs.openzeppelin.com/openzeppelin/gsn/what-is-the-gsn
If you have questions you can also ask in the Community Forum: https://forum.openzeppelin.com/
Disclosure: I am the Community Manager at OpenZeppelin

Off-chain authorization system


What form of currency to do transactions between us and droids?

Question: Very soon I suspect we will see the rise of machine in the next couple of decades if people continue abusing Moore laws, suppose robot laws are hardwired into their core how can we make them believe in the value of money and what will be the form of currency be like? For all I know bitcoin is dead and I need the form of currency to be recognized by the droid and majority of us! Let me simplified my question: If a banana can bribe a gorilla for a selfie what can be used on droids?
Comment: To be honest. I think this question needs working. It seems very broad. For example: What kind of droids are they? do we have the Three Laws of Robotics? do robots serve humans, are they equal or are humans subservient? are humans elimiated completely, in which case this is a purely robot-to-robot trading system
Comment: For what it's worth... Moore's law will not apply forever. We can only take it so far before it cannot be applied any longer. And we don't "abuse" this law. It is only an observation.
Comment: If the droids' neural networks were trained on the contemporary Internet, then presumably they would value cat pictures as a currency.
Comment: @Raisus: enlighten me please.
Comment: Other things to think about, what are your droids made of, what kind of parts do they need, would said parts be worth trading for? Does money even exist in this theoretical world or are trades done by other means like favours?
Comment: @DangerZone: u r right of course any smaller the transistor will allow almost all electrons to tunnel through!
Comment: "Lugnuts! Precious Lugnuts! Horray for the humans!"
Comment: Assuming no restrictions on droids being allowed to purchase whatever goods they need or "desire", they would use whatever money the vendor accepted.
Comment: If it works for Coke machines ,why should't it work for more capable robots?
Comment: Time and energy will always be usable. they can relate currency to labor time or a unit of energy.
Answer: US Dollars, Euros, or any internationally strong currency used by humans in your world.
Let's face it - most of our "currency" is already in bank accounts; not as any physical form but as electronic entries machines "understand" as well as, or better than, we do. What does a droid need? Maintenance? Spare parts? Power source? All of these can be easily bought with regular currencies.
TL;DR: No need for anything new, normal money will work.
Comment: I'd generalize this to "any currency currently in use by humans at the respective time". If humans and droids are going to interact financially, there will have to be some common ground, and unless there's a very good reason to do it differently, people are going to be familiar with whatever currency they are used to at the time. The droids can convert this to some other currency that is naturally useful among themselves if they have a reason to do so, just like humans exchange one currency for another for travelling or cross-border purchases.
Comment: @MichaelKjörling not just "any". But "any strong, international" is true. Answer updated.
Comment: Certainly fair enough.
Comment: they could exchange them for nuts, bolts and portable batteries.
Comment: *not just "any". But "any strong, international" is true.* - and that is the main problem with your answer.
Comment: @MolbOrg dare to elaborate?
Comment: @Mołot would be a challenge, but some points are in my answer to that question. It is free market for "good" participants. Small north Korea village have no chances to participate. I forgot how is it called  when financial institutes have lots of bucket of *different* foreign currencies, instead having best, strongest and most international currency. This selection, acceptance, at end point subjective judgment of group of peoples is source of problems. Equality of precipitants is not quite equal - sort of that thing - your money are not quite good money so 20% on top for risk and +5% for mood.
Comment: It is a good answer, as first order of approximation. Not upvoted just because it already got enough reward for what it is. Could be my answer if it wasn't already yours. And that comment of yours catched my eye after I wrote my answer, not first time, and got me in to thinking what is actually wrong with that moment. It is not like I was about to name some particular reason but didn't, it is more a point and source of problems, which I began to think about. It's lucky you commented it in such way and it drew my attention - very interesting moment to think about, answers are not expected soon.
Comment: One possible caveat to machine intelligence accepting human currency is: what if they think humans insane for having faith in a fiat rather than commodity backed currency, given the non-zero failure rate of many historical fiat currencies? Examples: any fiat currency after that nation lost a war (US confederate, German WW2) or other hyperinflation currency (Zimbabwe dollar).
Comment: @Mark currency is just a method to get humans to do what they need. And commodity based currencies have their failures, too. Grain tokens? What if grain in town silos gets wet and moldy? Things like that.
Answer: Energy backed money
Our predecessors used salt, shells, gems and gold pieces as a currency before banking era. The same way we can use energy (kWh) as a modern universal equivalent, which is valuable for droids. Using energy instead of money is common among various sci-fi settings. Later it could evolve to the energy backed currency.
Energy backed money is a real concept:

http://www.theperfectcurrency.org/main-energy-currency/energy-currency
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Energy-Backed_Currencies
http://www.energybackedmoney.com/
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/44827/discussion-on-answer-by-enkryptor-what-form-of-currency-to-do-transactions-betwe).
Answer: Computational power modules to feed their mainframe
Think about their mainframe (not saying they are a hive mind) but kind of like the droid that droids go to to figure something more complex out quicker.
Compared to human currency
Now this droid/device is like a government to the droids and since our currency relies on our government's worth, adding more power to this mainframe or having more power for this mainframe mobile would be worth something between the droids as well as humans.
So the currency will be a module such as hot-swappable CPU or full device like the Raspberry Pi, which contains cpu, motherboard and ram, which they can plug into this mainframe should they please.
Variation in currency
If trading with these droids became standard then, like currency, these modules would be separated into categories to define their worth. probably small categories like cents and dollars or pence and pounds
so powerful module, standard module and lesser module
like platinum, gold and silver
This answer assumes you want a currency that will carry through the ages to when droids go to other universes to trade
Comment: Consider economy of scale and algorithms that don't parallelise well, so a module that does 10 arbitrary computing units does more and is cheaper to maintain than 10 modules doing 1 unit each.Huge computing farms that sell "computation vouchers" would outcompete trading the hardware directly.Actually, that's what all "cloud compiting" thing was about and now you can buy computations quite flexibly.If you really need this to stick, though, you need some clever cryptography so provider cannot spy on what you're doing: you can pay with your enemy's gold, you can run on your enemy's servers.
Comment: @Daerdemandt yeah i was thinking of how when faster computing components come out how the older components lose value. but a rise in newer faster CPUs when be akin to the same thing that Zimbabwe went through and that their currency is now worth nothing and are thus switching to a new currency (the chinese currency) and have been using American dollars in the mean time. I'm sure we will reach a stage in the future where CPU's that are faster will be harder to produce and could take a decade to increase on die computational power.
Answer: Energy and energy backed money
It was mentioned already by @enkryptor, but lead to some discussion why energy and not currencies or other arbitrary tokens would be used.
I wish to address at this point that this is an extension to enkryptor's answer. Although I'm not a financial expert, and this should be included in equations by those who can do it, for others, there are just a few aspects as I see them at the moment.
Why energy?
Energy is objectively measurable, just like any other form of money (currencies, oil, salt, whatever) - there is no significant difference.
The value, or buying strength, of it is also not fixed - it changes itself over advances in using it (technology), or because of a change in demand, production and etc.
What is good about it - it can't be diluted by definition.

One of the reasons is mentioned here The Truth About The Fall of Rome: Modern Parallels. I can't say it is the truth as it is (I have an opinion, but that's all), but there are concerns about different kinds of manipulation and the subject probably is beyond a single answer at all, and this particular answer for sure.

It is relatively easy to check or count them - you are pouring them in your energy pocket and counting them at the same time. Counting them and verifying them is the same single process.
It can not be falsified. Even if using them does not prevent fraud, the tokens themselves can't be falsified.
No need for a single emitting center. That is actually an important moment - especially when we are talking about humans vs machines, as it might be the question of survival for both of those kinds, and if they have to exchange some goods, it is probably a good idea to have something which is universally acceptable, despite the relations between the parties using it.

as an example the emitting center might say: screw you, all bonds with numbers xxx to yyy you possess - we will not accept them, we do not have obligations for them, our reasons for doing that are stronk etc. And inform other parties about the decision too, to prevent selling those bonds. It will do harm to the droid/human relation, but it is not the same harm(from humans perspective) - it's a lesser one than when humans would say that about other humans. (And they do it sometimes by freezing accounts, etc. - the system still works) A distributed system will prevent such types of manipulations.

It is not totally fiat money, and it has a definite intrinsic value for a particular group, which can be different for different groups (as part of the relativistic aspect of energy money), and that value could be kept in secret, be less predictable for an opponent, and probably eliminate the possibility of the existence of a definite winning strategy. So you do not have to use other forms of interaction like stock exchanges - remember we talk about "droids" humans, they might have different values and not disclosed goals (there are a lot of social aspects as consequences in choosing energy as money - in short, it allows to connect social structures with little or no common/shared social basis).
The intrinsic value does not depend on stocks. It is defined by the capabilities of that group alone, and if they have all sets of technologies they need, they are not so dependent on values up/downs/fall of some currency. There is no need to have lots of them in your pocket, no need to care about stock prices, exchange rates (no need to dedicate resources for those who cares like financial advisers, brokers etc). The Domino effect is much much less problematic than it is now, or at least there are more solutions to prevent participating in it. Vanishing one of the players just means there is now a free place, objectively free, more place under the sun. (Kind of like it is now, but not quite so IMHO).
Despite gold and other substitutions - energy is used in every single task, product, service etc. It is at least one definite thing we can say about any civilization: humans, alien, droids, etc. Not sure about Olympian god's - but it looks like to some extent it is true for them too. (Not sure about creatures with a source of infinite energy, which is created from nothing - but I guess at least for some time we can exclude these from our equations. Olympians were limited in their power - so not a big deal for us.)
The value and thereby the price of a wide set of goods and services are well defined for that particular group for the buyer. It is defined at different levels: a single individual, some parts of a group, for the group as a whole, for the whole civilization. It can have a different value on every level and for every group - but it is defined in each particular case by the buyer. He can more precisely estimate what is a fair price for him based on his capability, not on how much he can pay for it. It is less of an object of speculation or subjective perception of self-worth, or speculative efforts of individuals to manipulate stocks. And the conception of a fair price is more defined. You always (ideally) know what the fair price for you and for your situation is.

It has a place in some particular cases, like knowing what has to be done to produce this or another good and actual capability to go from a plan to actually doing that production. And with other possible parts of that system, like sharing technologies and p2p development - it could be true, and more easily to estimate. Also it will have a benefit for p2p development - just a part of it or a way to share information about the possibility of more efficient production of something because at the end it lowers your personal prices as a buyer of particular goods (I should probably skip that part because the explanation of it is far beyond the scope of that answer, but whatever.)

The ability to not participate and do not rely on stocks exchanges to determine a fair price eliminates the need to understand mass behavior of humans in an effort to determine if it is the next upcoming bubble or it is a real trend, and what the nature of that trend is. We are a separate kind and we do not have to understand why pokemons are back and why they are worth something, just as a weird example, the thing is more complex than that, but it is, again, about sharing common cultural values, even not themselves, but sharing that basis which makes them possible. And as droids are a different kind, it doesn't have to be expected that they will share even some of that basis, or at least big enough to produce common cultural values at all (probably a few are expected, but not a lot - energy is one of them).
Another kind of why?, which I wish to separate from others
The things above where some local details, or aspects and realization benefits. But there are some factors, as we (I) can imagine them now at more global scale, which should not slip from attenuation in situations, such as droids vs humans.
One of the universal things, which we believe to work for all as of now known living things - is survival. So if droids are so independent that they have money instead of orders, my bet is that those survival principles will apply to them too (no instant FTL for infinite distances (in case the universe is not finite), no infinite energy - both are equivalents).
Within a solar system, the available energy is great but finite. Within the sphere expanding with the speed of light, it is big, but finite, even if it changes over time for quite a long time. It is big, but finite within our galaxy - and there is a considerably longer time until the next source in terms of expansion. (But if you are interested in that you could, maybe, read this, that, and all videos from this YT Channel Isaac Arthur).
Despite the possible intellectual differences and knowledge between civilizations, Samuel Colt Made Them Equal Energy is possibly the way to compensate for intellectual and knowledge-based differences between all parties.
One possible way of keeping an equilibrium, and a way to grantee to be respected by the other party despite other factors, which could be not so much superior, is to have enough energy and preventing others from having it. Someone can be smart, but without energy to realize that smartness in actions it is worth nothing.
That alone might be a social reason to switch our perception of money to energy, to ensure that this is a subject of interest of every single human alive. And humans are tools to control that subject and detect any changes in it. Someone could outsmart us, but as long as we care about each other we should notice changes in our counts, or any direct or indirect obstruction of energy flow (force is stronk) to us as humans.
You have to understand that a top notch AI needs the energy to outsmart us as a system. It does not need a lot of energy or intellect to outsmart a single person, but as a system, we are much more robust, and the task itself is more complex. So even with a perfect AI (or a system of "droids"), this energy equilibrium exists. It is not a stable state without other shared and respected interests between parties. Shared interest makes this situation more stable (we are lazy and are happy to expect some inventions from AI, so we have a base interest in its existence. AI also might have some interest), but even in that situation, someone has to keep an eye on the energy balance. Without shared values, it is vital to have humans en masse based Joda collective - which "feels" that energy flows.
The biggest energy supply in our system at the moment is the Sun. So, on the solar system arena, we are talking about establishing control over a $382.8 * 10^{24} \frac{J}{s}$ source. It is not the biggest and most powerful source which is possible within our system - because of its inefficiency and low power output per unit of mass. But at least it is within a few (at least one as I'm aware of, or as my imagination stretches) orders of magnitude near that value.
As we definitely have an interest in the existence of AI, I suggest we should have 51% of it, in case droids efficiency is equivalent to human efficiency - efficiency in terms of intellectually and technology/energy wise combined. If they are more efficient, then we should accumulate more power.
Establishing that equilibrium, and power over power probably will not be a one day process, and the amount of energy in possession and energy sources will determine how fast parties move to that equilibrium. Probably it was not worth to notice because the equilibrium establishing still might be more like catch than a long run, but the initial energy will be one of the factors which determine the outcome.
This way of changing the energy balance, so as energy exchange and energy money use might become an even more fundamental thing, as a way to overcome our human separations, laziness (we have inventions, and productions, we can't buy only with droid relations) etc. in the face of that "droid" system, and will determine the true worth of groups.
As a conclusion
These are some of my thoughts and reasonings about the subject that lead me to believe that using energy as money is more than just money energy, and as some of us are expecting some AI to come to existence, I suggest we start using them sooner than later, even if it might have deep benefits now, it might have even deeper benefits later.
Answer: The boring answer is "money, because money is a proxy for resources".
But money is a lossy proxy.  It was designed with human limitations in mind, for an economic structure also designed around human limitations.
It is possible that an AI, stripped of human limitations, would engage in a different kind of economics -- economics 2.0 -- that doesn't rely on the approximation of "money" to facilitate trade.
As a simple example, imagine if all trades where arranged based on a a multi-party barter system possibly spanning the world.  You don't sell your chicken for money, you sell it for exactly the resources.  It never transitions to being an arbitrary unit of currency.  The chicken trade ends up resulting in an obligation by someone on the far side of the world to manufacture the fence posts you'll need in 3 weeks to repair the expected damage to your coop, plus a delivery of pizza tonight.  The person you gave the chicken to promised various other things in an extremely long and complex chain that led to those things being delivered.
We can go a step further and have the economics be based on promises and obligations of particular form that are not actually concrete goods, whose value fluxates based on the expected ability for each party to do their job.
Going even further, the trade might involve being paid to have your own AI software modified in certain ways, changing your own preference function in exchange for satisfying your current needs.
And that might be economics 1.1, because at least you can understand the description.
The thing of value being traded may eventually be something actually beyond human ability to understand even a simplified version of it.  Imagine describing credit default swaps to a gorilla.  Now how about more complex financial instruments.
If said economic system is sufficiently more powerful than ours, ours will be swallowed.  What resources we are afforded will be along the lines of what resources we provide gorillas or other non-economic actors: their economic value to the system is determined less by their own actions and what they provide us, than what we decide it is.  They have no framework to understand what behavior would optimize their supply of resources, other than hoping that the rate at which the optimal behavior changes is slower than their ability to adapt to the seemingly arbitrary demands placed on them.
Of course, if the droids are dumb (say, no smarter than us), then probably an economic system similar to our current one (or at least one we understand) will be used to trade with them.
Comment: Thing is, that becomes the unit of exchange, and as the list of possible things to trade grows ever larger, the unit of exchange becomes more abstract. Before you know it, it's money. People tend to forget but money is just a promise of a favour.
Comment: More like stock exchange 2.0 :)
Comment: _"The chicken trade ends up resulting in an obligation by someone on the far side of the world to manufacture the fence posts you'll need in 3 weeks to repair the expected damage to your coop, plus a delivery of pizza tonight."_ Human economics are more complex than this not because we're humans, but because this arrangement is far too simplistic. Unless your droid can predict the future, such a rigid arrangement would be next to useless.
Comment: @LightnessRacesinOrbit Sure.  You can trade that right to fence posts away for what you need.  Or anything else, all without a unit of exchange.  But even this is far too simplistic: the economy is about things trading hands, not payment.  A system that results in the same things trading hand with no notion of payment could exist (we just couldn't arrange it).  A system that somehow distributes the goods in some "more efficient" way (how to measure it?) could dominate over one that is based off payment.
Comment: @light it becomes abstract because we are not smart enough to deal with concrete promises on the required scale and complexity.  A critter smart enough can drop the absraction.  But a critter smarter than that might work out a different way to allocate resources entirely.
Comment: I'd say our intelligence is what led to the abstraction!
Comment: @user6760: And humans will have as much chance of understanding the economics of stock market 3.14159 developed by our future A.I. overlords as chimpanzees would have of understanding mutual funds or market derivatives.
Answer: The financial system could be under significant pressure from droids.

they can work 24/7 without needing a break
they don't need to eat
they don't need a home

These are the primary limitations on the human body along with being the primary costs keeping the money in circulation.
There are secondary factors, for example humans desire stuff. Meatbags have a tendency to want to keep up with the Jones, to indulge in financial vanity, to be seen to have wealth and spend it. This is another factor keeping money in circulation, again droids don't have these urges (unless artificially written in).
This leads to a classic problem that the Luddites will always protest against. Each droid puts 3-4 people out of work and generates almost none of the economic activity for the money earned relative to those people. The people who want the things they produce will have no money to buy them due to being out of work. Total economic collapse results. At least that's the theory, in practice it never seems to work that way as industries automate.
The solution is to keep the droids as slaves and not give them money at all. Limit how many droids a household can own and each one is permitted to take the work of a member of the household who is responsible for its maintenance and to whom the droid's earnings go.
What could possibly go wrong, slaves never rebel after all.
Comment: If we assume a droid can do the work of 4 people, all we need is for that droid to kill 4 people first and we solve the lack of work problems. As far as spending money goes, well we just need to increase power bills so that droids need to work to pay their power consumption. Also, death rays consume a lot of power, and you can't be a proper robot without a personal death ray.
Comment: All we need to do is ensure that our droids have desires; problem solved. What could possibly go wrong?
Answer: This answer is a meta-answer, but the angle has not been touched on by others.  It would be very interesting to enforce good behavior by requiring a robot to have a stream of some non-elemental (not power, not material) token to operate.  Feel free to modify this answer to be more concrete...  A token that authorizes access to information (kbytes, including sensory input) is the closest I can come to this, but it's hard to make guarantees that it can't be cheated...
In that way, robots that misbehave are sanctionable.  Maybe the lack of specificity of this idea means it's not possible to make something that a robot/computer can't independently steal or create.  But this would make an ideal wage for a robot.  If a paid transaction got a robot in trouble, the sponsor would be responsible in some way as well...  This is a bit law and orderly perhaps or Orwellian, since someone has to decide what actions can be sanctioned, but it would solve the problem of robots out of control, or robots utilized for nefarious purposes in cases where the three laws of robotics fail.  If society agrees, the robot can act...
I would never argue for a human to be ruled exactly like this, though there is an aspect to this to human society already.  "Freedom" is the token.  If society disagrees on an action, any amount of freedom you obtain from your situation goes away when you go to jail...
Answer: The thing to keep in mind about trade is that it occurs when both parties get something of greater value than the things that they give up.
For example, I buy bread from a baker because I value eating that bread more than the dollar I give up.  The baker takes the dollar because he values the dollar more than the bread he baked.  I used "bread" and "dollar" in this example, but this applies to any two people, and anything that they might want to trade.
Thus, to understand what forms of currency a droid will want to use, you need to understand what the motivations that a given droid may have, and what the droid calculates will help accomplish its goals.
For example, if a droid decided it wanted to go to the moon, it may very well create widgets that humans really like, so that it can get dollars from humans (or perhaps gold, or something else entirely, instead -- it could be that, due to inflation and poor government policy, no one -- droid OR human -- will want anything to do with dollars), which it can then use to buy rocket fuel and ingersol (from humans and other droids alike!) to build something that will take it to the moon.
Answer: Electricity. Or rather, access to power when needed. Maybe power storage would be valued as well.
Upgrades. Some may value expanded capacity or capability.
Spare parts. On the other hand, with extra options, more might be required / requested of the unit, so there may be a value in NOT upgrading. Regardless, one spare in storage is worth two in the store.
Clock cycles. Access to extra ticks makes many jobs easier, or at least faster.
Answer: Let's assume the Droids of which you speak, are self aware, having needs, wants and desires. Then the droids will use whatever money is in wide use at that time to trade for those things they need. Reason being that money is just an easily carried, stored and/or traded "object" which represents a fairly specific amount of goods and/or services. Society itself decides what objects will be generally accepted as currency/money at that specific time in history.
So it is not so much getting a droid to see the value of money, it's getting the droid to recognize and use whatever form of currency/money has value in the society in which lives, works and plays.
Now, if your question is what are we going to pay droids for working, than the answer gets a bit more difficult. It would depend on if their self awareness made them selfish as well. That would be the point in time that a machine refuses to work without receiving a reward or a "bribe" to use your word.
Answer: Time.
For the (assuming self-aware, three-laws compliant robots) robots, time takes the form of energy supply - if they run out of energy, they run out of time.
For the humans, time takes the form of robots performing services for them, even earning money for them.  Leaving them free to do whatever they want.
The exchange rate (between robot time/human time) would be something to work out though.


Do you actively think about security when coding?

Question: When you're coding, do you actively think about your code might be exploited in ways it wasn't originally meant to do and thus gain access to protected information, run commands or something else you wouldn't want your users to do?
Comment: Yes, often. Usually in phrases similar to "dammit, I have no time, I hope no one will find out".
Comment: When coding what?  I do a lot of different things.
Answer: Kindof. Disclaimer: I'm a security guy ;)
So the way I work is that I have my threat model, which describes what kind of attacks by what kind of attackers are likely. That helps to work out the security requirements. When I'm actually coding, I do the usual "safe coding" practices like being careful that cursor variables are always within bounds, tainted input is sanitised, error conditions are handled. Then I go back to my threat model to see which modules are most likely to get targeted by attackers; those get some extra review.
Answer: I use industry-standard practices, like using SQL parameters.  I use "safe" platforms, like the .NET Framework, and take advantage of security features like anti-forgery tokens in ASP.NET MVC.  I don't write my own encryption algorithms, but I do understand what those encryptions provide in the way of security benefits, and when I need to use them to obtain those security benefits.
In short, I use best practices, but I don't develop my own security tools.  I am not a security expert in that regard; I rely on other security experts, who have presumably already thought deeply about these issues, and have a clear understanding of the risks and benefits.
My fundamental approach to security, beyond simply using security tools, is to eliminate all possible input to the system except that which I am expecting.  If I have a social security number field, the only characters that should actually show up are numeric digits and dashes, in a specific pattern.
I validate user input on both the client and the server.
Comment: I agree with the using the inbuilt security features, but surely you have to think about when and how it is appropriate to use them. I have to say I am concerned about the relying on others to think about security for your product.  They have not done that.
Comment: @Ptolemy: When it is *not* appropriate to parameterize a SQL statement? When is it *not* appropriate to use an anti-forgery token?  If the data is sensitive, when is it *not* appropriate to use encryption?
Comment: Lets consider the encryption for a moment. First question, what encryption do you use? using poor encryption gives a false sense of security. At some point you have to decrypt the data. At what point do you do this, what are the risks for this compared to the complexity of the code.  What actual protection does the encryption actually give you? Is your dll byte code encrypted or can the encryption key be read from your DLL?  thats why, just using the features with little or no understanding is dangerous.
Comment: @Ptolemy: If that's what you mean by thinking about security, then I agree, you do have to actually know these things to use these tools properly.
Answer: Absolutely.
Security is everything. And with numerical software, that goes twice.
Just the other day, a user managed to find and exploit the bug in one of my old programs. The damage was unreparable. See below:

It used to be round.
Comment: This needs further explanation :)
Comment: [Dun dun dun dun...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4IRMYuE1hI)
Answer: No, because I do not work in a problem domain where security is relevant (massive data visualization SW). I do have a bunch of asserts in my code (index checking, consistency checking, etc.), not because of security concerns, but because I like wrong code to crash early and crash visibly.
Answer: Absolutely.  I think about injection vulnerabilities, and also how my business logic will work in a desktop environment versus a web environment, and how security is implemented in both types of environments.
Answer: I'm no security expert, but when I'm coding web applications I always assume that user input may contain all sorts of weirdness and should always be fully escaped and suchlike. Also, I'm careful in making Ajax calls back to the server to check that the user is logged in (if they should be for that particular event) and that they have the permissions to do whatever it is they're trying to do.
The codebase has a set of filters for inputs. I never check PHP's $_GET or $_POST arrays directly. Instead, I query them through a function Request::get('parameter', 'filter') with filters such as int, text, and a few others. (And Request::post() for POST inputs, of course.)
Answer: Yes. When I worked on a multiplayer game, all were paranoid of exploits and ways to cheat. Cheating can destroy a game totally, not to mention any business models connected to selling in-game stuff. So security concerns and anti-tampering measures were very high on the agenda. I liked it very much. I have worked on others projects before where you had to feel guilty for working longer on the code just to assure it was secure.
Answer: Yes. Security is important, and shouldn't be an afterthought; adding security after the fact is generally more difficult than designing it into the application in the first place, and if you add it in later you'll probably miss some things (or just not bother adding it in at all).
Answer: Understand the general principles of security, (integrity, authentication, authority) and then
read a few books about how people have been subverting these pillars of security for millennia and you will be about half way there.
Then read a few good books on design and testing strategies and you will learn how to design testability into your architecture.
Now we get to the point when I do think about security. I am thinking about how can I validate the data source, does it matter if the data is tampered with, who is the data source, how sure of that am i? how could it have been altered etc...
This affects the design.  Config files may have key sections encrypted, or particular fields could be in clear text with an associated signature field.  Things get more complex with internet facing services as you should expect a greater level of hostility there.
Then at testing, how do you test all this.  What are your maximum data entries, what happens if you push the software beyond those limits, how does it handle it?  What does it trust?  how can you fake that trust?
Answer: It should be something any developer builds in to the process from the ground up to a greater or lesser degree, depending on application etc. Unfortunately, as devs don't tend to quote for security, buyers don't tend to think of it (I know, this is a bit catch-22, because if the buyers want the cheapest quote, it maybe won't include security)
As a developer you can gain a definite advantage if you are skilled in this area - I'm specifically thinking about banks and financial services, but other industries are also applicable. Currently they may budget 70 - 100k in training for a new graduate to be brought up to speed on processes, security and other specifics to that organisation. If you can save them 30k of that, that's a good CV plus!
In the UK, the Institute of Information Security Professionals, and in Scotland, the Centre of Excellence in Security and Cybercrime are working closely with Universities to help review course materials, provide guest lectures on real world implications of poor coding and facilitating summer placements (eg software developers placed into fraud divisions in law enforcement.) Most of the supporting organisations are doing this for free, as it has the potential to save them a large amount of money - sounds like value to me.
(disclaimer - I have been security guy for various global organisations)
Answer: Yes.
I've dealt with enough hackers in the past to know that they're constantly trying to compromise any big site, and there are enough bots out there that even small sites aren't safe.
I try to think like a hacker all the time now, to the point where I sometimes worry my co-workers with casual comments on how systems we take for granted every day can be gamed.


What kind of attacks result in an attacker only being able to leak a site's database?

Question: Of the public disclosures I've seen from recently compromised sites, it seems common for only the database to be leaked, rather than the application code, or rather than a complete takeover. Is this because there is a class of common attacks that are limited to read-only database access?
Answer: The first few that come to mind are:

An SQL injection attack where the database user in question has only the SELECT privilege.
A compromise of the primary database backups or the offsite database backups.  While these aren't read only, there's little likelihood of escalating the compromise by writing to backups.
A compromise of a shell account on a database server.  Even though you could use root privileges on a database box to gain a user account in the database itself, this would probably be a noisy action that would get the compromise noticed.  You could still copy the entire database contents without being noticed.

It's also entirely possible that the attackers in the leaks you are talking about had full privileges or at least more privileges than just read-only but chose not to use them.  Or they did use them but that use hasn't been detected yet.  Or that they have the full application code but chose not to leak that.

An interesting thought I just had while writing this about preventing 1. by reducing the attack surface is to have a separate database user account that only has access to the credentials table and your normal, read-only user doesn't have access to this table.  That way, only an SQL injection in the login form can compromise your password hashes.  Any SQL injection in another part of the web application cannot see the password hashes (or whatever other sensitive data you have).
Answer: Database is the gold mine that is why leaking the data in it means all the bad things. Application source code is important in some cases but if you look at the architecture of modern applications, most of the data comes from the back end database. Credentials, PIIs, credit card numbers, financial and business data, almost everything you want to protect is in the database.
Compromising the server (like getting the shell) only matters in case of bot attacks so that the bot network is expanded. Targeted attacks are always for the data. Therefore, compromising the database means achieving the objective.
As regards your "command attacks" thing, majority of the websites are compromised through SQL injection which directly executes attacker queries on the database. Read only database is the minimum you get in SQL injection. SQLi can result in full compromise of the machine as well by uploading shell code through the "INTO DUMPFILE" directive and these calling the shell through the web application resulting in a complete interactive shell through browser.
So data leakage most of the time achieve the objective that is why attackers stop there. If not, SQL injection provides many other attack avenues as well.
Answer: I guess if they find a SQL injection and the user that the website uses to query the database only has read access, then the result would indeed be that he can only do a read-only sql injection attack. But I do not think there is a specific class for that type of attacks. In general we just prepend read-only name of attack
Answer: If the database is the only compromised part of the web application, it's almost everytime a SQL Injection, which abuses an application function (e.g. a search form) in order to extract arbitrary data from the underlying database.
A database leak could also be caused by an internal attack, performed by an employee who had enough privileges to access the database.
Partial and complete database dumps can also be found via Google Hacking, which uses search engines to discover sensitive files that got indexed.
Lastly, I'd include application errors that might disclose data from the database if exceptions are not handled correctly.