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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

#141

Post by slededit »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #51
Analemma_ wrote: post #29

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…

Please don't call questions dumb. It discourages thoughtful conversation. There's a guideline somewhat related to this: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Unfair questions should be called out. Perhaps "dumb" isn't the most appropriate term, but I do think its fair to challenge the premise of the question. To prevent this leaves a whole rhetorical category immune from challenge.

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

#142

Post by mc32 »

delbel wrote: post #57

The system Oregon (and Colorado) uses for recreational is called METRC and is made by a company called Franwell. When I was at training, the spokes person actually asked for hands raised if anyone knew what a REST API was. Their seed-to-sale tracking system (required by law in Oregon), if used for food (just for example) would be able to tell you what corn field, and what corn plant, in Iowa, when and what fertilizer…

Cumbersome, but cam you imagine the benefits to health, if expanded to food production, when an e.coli etc. outbreak happens or mad cow, etc. Trace back the farm and know exactly which lots to pull.

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

#143

Post by vegabook »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #77
vegabook wrote: post #18

Wow Microsoft is tickin' all the cool boxes under Nadella. Never seen such a radical, and it seems, effective, corpo image turnaround. Open source? Check. Ubuntu on Windows? Check. Contribute to BSD? Check. Progressive on pot? Check. Defeat the bots? Check. Gates on chickens? Check. This company is sick/dope/ice cold cool.

Ads delivered to your computer by Windows? Check. I'd rather have the old Microsoft back. :/

fair enough. But let's compare them to the competitors, Facebook, Google, Apple. Only the last can legitimately be said not to pollute your life with more ads than Microsoft. MS is benign by comparison with the first two.

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

#144

Post by chiph »

aphextron wrote: post #97
chiph wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of a friend was hired as a CFO at a dispensary, and pretty much had to create an entire accounting system from scratch. Cash management consisted of employees driving around to the store and collecting the money, as the armored car firms wouldn't accept their business. So he set up a subsidiary that went out and bought some armored cars and was able to safely transport the money, staffed with former military…

Why is that? Even software firms don't want to deal with weed?

When you buy an accounting system there's a lot of customization that goes on to set up your chart of accounts, configure check printing, etc. They were apparently running the business off an Excel spreadsheet, so even Quickbooks would have been a step up.

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

#145

Post by vegabook »

vegabook wrote: post #18

Wow Microsoft is tickin' all the cool boxes under Nadella. Never seen such a radical, and it seems, effective, corpo image turnaround. Open source? Check. Ubuntu on Windows? Check. Contribute to BSD? Check. Progressive on pot? Check. Defeat the bots? Check. Gates on chickens? Check. This company is sick/dope/ice cold cool.

Actually, couple of things I forgot. First IMO Microsoft has always been properly credible on programming languages. Right back to MASM. There were 20 years of awful behaviour, but the languages side was always a highlight (I forgive VB but even that was okay for its use case).

Also, little things. Anybody looked at Babylon.js? Brilliant, brilliantly documented, and the sense that this Open Source "side project" by a few MS employees is really being given enthusiastic support by the parent, the feeling that it's not going to wither. Strength to strength. I love it.

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

#146

Post by jnhuynh »

eunoia wrote: post #7
kbenson wrote: post #2

This makes sense. As a big player in enterprise, Microsoft is recognizing that there's a new industry that's vastly under served.

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 part of this is that everyone, retailers and regulators, are still figuring out how to run things. The problem is nuanced because of differences in taxes for recreational and medical, tracking of the product "from seed to sale", and various weird business regulations. We learn a lot of these trips and always come back with a lot of ideas on how to improve our product for our customers and do what our competitors don't.

We are visiting Denver, CO in a couple weeks. :D

Also, this is a plug, but we are starting to ramp up [hiring][3]. Currently, we only have the Engineering job posting up, but we are looking for a lot of positions and more will be posted up within the next few weeks.

[1]:https://www.greenbits.com/ [2]:https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/22/green-bits-launches-point-... [3]:https://jobs.lever.co/greenbits?lever-via=_335J-YDmj

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

#148

Post by edoceo »

I make https://weedtraqr.com/ - we are operational in Washington and Oregon - and now apparently compete with MS.

The company Microsoft is working with (Agrisoft) doesn't even operate in WA, or OR yet. And has been sold like two times in the last two years (first to Surna[0] then to Kind[1])

Additionally their "partnership" is really just Agrisoft getting free Azure hosting. The headline is very click-bait.

[0] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/surna-inc-acquires-m...

[1] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kind-financial-acqui...

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

#149

Post by edoceo »

13of40 wrote: post #32
godzillabrennus wrote: post #3

Good. Maybe they can open a cafe on their campus to sell recreational versions so their people can test their tech and try the product. It'd make many developers I know want to work for Microsoft.

There's a weed store about 4 blocks from the Lincoln Square and City Center (Microsoft) buildings in Bellevue. Or so I've heard.

That store uses GreenBits

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

#150

Post by copperx »

eunoia wrote: post #7
kbenson wrote: post #2

This makes sense. As a big player in enterprise, Microsoft is recognizing that there's a new industry that's vastly under served.

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…

Why can't they use a run-of-the-mill POS? or a POS designed for pharmacies?
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