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Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade

nytimes.com

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Re: Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade

#152
You couldn't pay us[0] to use a microsoft product. We'll stick with OpenBravo[1] and OpenAG Initiative[2] to handle all our enterprise resource needs from seed to customer.

0. http://medicalcannab.is

1. http://www.openbravo.com/

2. https://github.com/OpenAgInitiative

Re: Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRS explicitly states that you need to declare bribes and income from illegal activities [1] "Illegal activities. Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity." [1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch12.html

That's just hilarious! Are you saying drug dealers actually report their income and pay taxes off it?

For some twilight-zone stuff, check out drug tax stamps (i.e. http://www.ksrevenue.org/perstaxtypesdrug.html)

You have to buy them and place them on your drugs so if you get raided, you can prove that you paid taxes on your supply. There are even folks who collect the stamps.

Re: Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade

#155
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was it incompatible by design or simply by incompetent management? "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Seriously, what a dumb question. The answer is "neither": at the time of its release, IE6 was great. It was way better than its only real competition, Netscape 6, which hadn't seen updates in years. Yes, it had bugs, but all software does. If Microsoft had just given it regular updates, it would've been fine. Th…

Not sure why the snark. I think it's a fair question. Since you take issue with the phrasing, I'll enlarge it to "development & management of IE up to 2006." They did give it regular updates throughout that period; those updates just never targeted web standards. I'm honestly wondering whether that was through explicit desire (it's a valid business strategy), willful misdirection (not prioritizing "the web"), or mana…

There was never any team tasked with working on Trident after IE6 shipped till IE7 work restarted; as far as I'm aware, it was always the case that the IE shell was developed relatively separately to Trident, so those who did do all the work (esp. for later XP SPs) probably scarcely had any knowledge of the Trident codebase to really start trying to fix bugs.

Re: Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade

#156

There is no legal marijuana trade in the US, as all marijuana trade is criminal under federal law, and it's generally a crime to knowingly profit from a crime (and, since drug offenses are covered in RICO, it's another crime to use any profits tired to them in the operation of any business engaged in interstate commerce.) Microsoft may be keeping distant enough not to worry (though perhaps not given their formal part…

We know at least one case where a state DA has gone after a software developer tied to an illegal activity (gambling, [1]) so having a middleman and limiting their customers to governments may be an unfortunate legal necessity to prevent their engineers getting strong-armed into becoming informants.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2013/01/coder-charged-for-gambling-sof...

Re: Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade

#157
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massively underserved. I live in Denver and have friends with ownership stakes in local dispensaries. The quality of their software solutions (mainly POS/Compliance) is laughable. Edit: This ( http://www.mjfreeway.com/ ) is the defacto standard. I kid you not it went down for 2 weeks ~a year ago after scheduled maintenance went wrong. At the time it had ~50% market share, this left dispensaries around the country doi…

It's funny that you mention MJFreeway. Their one of our competitors. I'm an engineer at [Greenbits][1], a marijuana POS system running on almost 50% of stores in Washington State. We were runner up finalists at [2015's Tech Crunch Disrupt][2]. Every quarter, we do visits to stores (some of our customers and those of our competitors). It's amazing to see the state of the industry and how underserved it is. I think par…

Just asking because I saw that the engineering position listed San Jose but it seems that there are remote employees and an office in Portland, as well. Are there opportunities for remote work for the current/future hiring needs?

Re: Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade

#158

There is no legal marijuana trade in the US, as all marijuana trade is criminal under federal law, and it's generally a crime to knowingly profit from a crime (and, since drug offenses are covered in RICO, it's another crime to use any profits tired to them in the operation of any business engaged in interstate commerce.) Microsoft may be keeping distant enough not to worry (though perhaps not given their formal part…

> as all marijuana trade is criminal under federal law You may be right because of the word trade ; however, the Federal government itself has authorized the growing (University of Mississippi) and interstate distribution of legal marijuana since 1976 through CIND. Not trying to split hairs, because the total patient list has probably always been under a dozen people, but it is still an interesting fact and one I onl…

Is this for consumption as full cannabis products (for smoking or consumables) or for the production of marinol only?

Re: Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade

#159

There is no legal marijuana trade in the US, as all marijuana trade is criminal under federal law, and it's generally a crime to knowingly profit from a crime (and, since drug offenses are covered in RICO, it's another crime to use any profits tired to them in the operation of any business engaged in interstate commerce.) Microsoft may be keeping distant enough not to worry (though perhaps not given their formal part…

There is no legal marijuana trade in the US, You mean interstate trade, of course.

FDR's Supreme Court blew the Commerce Clause open such that the Feds can regulate purely intrastate commerce as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

Re: Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as all marijuana trade is criminal under federal law You may be right because of the word trade ; however, the Federal government itself has authorized the growing (University of Mississippi) and interstate distribution of legal marijuana since 1976 through CIND. Not trying to split hairs, because the total patient list has probably always been under a dozen people, but it is still an interesting fact and one I onl…

Is this for consumption as full cannabis products (for smoking or consumables) or for the production of marinol only?

Consumption as full cannabis products.
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