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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

#51

Post by sillysaurus3 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #29
ethbro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally! I thought about this the other day. Given that it's been about 15 years, is there anyone in the HN community / internet that's spoken about the design decisions with IE 6? Specifically, was it incompatible by design or simply by incompetent management?

> 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."

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

#52

Post by shimon »

mikestew wrote: post #31
joefkelley wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's still very much illegal federally. It's still a Schedule I controlled substance. The federal banking system / IRS refuses to interact with marijuana businesses, the postal service won't mail ads for it, the DEA continues to raid growers, etc, etc. Edit: as others have pointed out, I was incorrect in lumping in the IRS with the rest of the federal banking system. The IRS does indeed accept money from marijua…

IRS refuses to interact with marijuana businesses That's not even remotely true, as even 30 years ago the IRS happily took my money, and did so without telling anyone else where the money came from. I mean, maybe it's changed since, but when it comes to "IRS won't take my money", ima gonna have to pull the "citation needed" card.

In the mid-80s, you reported income to the IRS as coming from a marijuana business?

Bold move.

Is there a statutory prohibition on the IRS sharing this info with other law enforcement agencies? Where is the line, i.e. would you expect confidentiality if you reported proceeds from your work as a hitman?

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

#54

Post by tacos »

colemickens wrote: post #40
tacos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest pothead team at Microsoft was the Internet Explorer guys. So if you want another 20 years of calculating bounding rectangles incorrectly, by all means let's get the rest of the company baked.

Really? This? Again? There's a reason tech companies don't drug test and I'd argue that flies in the face of the tired stereotype you're offering up. edit: It's funny to watch HN's reactions to anything related to cannabis. You'd think people here watched Reefer Madness and haven't bothered to inform themselves about any actual facts or know any actual consumers of cannabis since then. The implication that someone sm…

I personally told these numbskulls multiple times that width = x2 - x1 PLUS one. Maybe it was the weed, maybe they just sucked at coding, maybe you didn't notice that FAXes were blurry in Windows for 20 years either.

The real problem at late 90s Microsoft was cocaine. Didn't see much of that among the engineers though.

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

#55

Post by ethbro »

Analemma_ wrote: post #29
ethbro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally! I thought about this the other day. Given that it's been about 15 years, is there anyone in the HN community / internet that's spoken about the design decisions with IE 6? Specifically, was it incompatible by design or simply by incompetent management?

> 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 management incompetence (inability to deliver desired standards compliance). I've never read / heard anything definitive to explain which of those happened.

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

#56

Post by matwood »

ethbro wrote: post #23
PeCaN wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of old IE things were pretty nice¹. The only real problem was the abysmal support for actual standards, along with a myriad of weird bugs. ¹ See: XMLHttpRequest, innerHTML, box model, CSS filters, CSS behaviors², VML, etc ² Well, behavior: was probably a terrible idea, but it did allow hacking oldIE to support an awful lot of CSS3.

Incidentally! I thought about this the other day. Given that it's been about 15 years, is there anyone in the HN community / internet that's spoken about the design decisions with IE 6? Specifically, was it incompatible by design or simply by incompetent management?

I don't think it was purposeful. When IE6 was released, it won. It was so much better than the alternatives that MS simply didn't have to do anything, so they didn't. The antitrust thing was also in full swing, so bundling/unbundling was in question.

The web version of Outlook was one of the, if not the first AJAX application. IIRC, IE added XMLHttpRequest to support web Outlook.

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

#57

Post by delbel »

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 used, in a hamburger you just ate. (to draw an analogy) -- might be a little overkill but it what the current recreational law. The METRC webui I think is bootstrap based and is very nice. I haven't looked at the REST API yet, but their system integrates with RFID tags on the plant and packages itself with chain of custody style controls. http://www.metrc.com/ I am user of their system.

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

#58

Post by dragonwriter »

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 partnership with Kind, even if their own offering is only to governments), but Kind is basically betting it's business -- and the personal liberty of its decision makers -- on the willingness of the federal government to extend the informal prosecutorial tolerance of in-state activities related to marijuana that comply with state laws in states which have adopted some form of state legalization to larger interstate enterprises (and on that tolerance continuing at all, which it might well not under a different administration.)

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

#59

Post by eitally »

eunoia wrote: post #30
encoderer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the state, plants need to be tracked from seed to sale. That is just one aspect of it that I'm familiar with. I'm sure the compliance burdens beyond that are significant.

A combination of federal illegality (which affects banking heavily) and special compliance requirements necessitates custom industry solutions AFAIK.

But that's really no different from discrete manufacturing, where you have to track precious metals, hazardous materials, import/export regulations, etc. I wonder why the major players don't just make the minor adaptations so they can serve this market, too.
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