tanzam75

> It's not "MBA-speak"; this sense of the word "secular" is used in economics, time-series analysis, astronomy, etc.

Of course it's MBA-speak. MBA-speak does not mean that they invented the word, or that only MBAs use the word. It just means that MBAs prefer to use the word where another one would do.

Nadella could have talked about "long-term trends" or "ongoing trends" or "sustainable trends." However, he chose to use "secular trends." His fondness for jargon makes him harder to understand.

Another example of MBA-speak is "synergy." The OED traces "joint action, cooperation" to 1632, and "a combined effect which is greater than additive" to 1904 ("synergism"). The first listed MBA-speak usage of the term is a 1981 article in The Economist on brokerage mergers.

Does that mean that "synergy" is "not MBA-speak" because the term is also used by scientists? Of course not! It just means that the MBAs adopted a term that others had already been using.

I would place "secular" into the same category as "synergy." The OED traces its astronomical usage to 1801 and its economics usage to 1895. Its first appearance outside a scientific context is in 1973, in an article in The Daily Telegraph on interest rates.

Before 2013, Visa and Mastercard forbade credit card surcharges. However, cash discounts were allowed.

The problem was the Most Favored Nation clause in the credit card contracts. Merchants could offer cash discounts, but they could not offer discounts to non-Visa credit cards.

Since the antitrust settlements, all four U.S. credit card networks have allowed surcharges. Also, the Most Favored Nation clause only applies to "equal or higher cost" competitors.

Walmart US could fight Visa by adding a surcharge only to Visa cards. Walmart Canada cannot. In 2013, a similar antitrust case was dismissed in Canada.

> Windows 7 was the VM, not the host.

Oh. Then I agree with you that Microsoft screwed up the licensing -- but it's a different screw-up.

Windows 7 Ultimate is just like Windows 7 Enterprise, except for the virtualization rights. With Enterprise, each license allows 4 concurrent VMs. With Ultimate, you only get one.

The original idea of Ultimate was to be a consumer version of Enterprise. You didn't have to go through a salesman. You could just buy Ultimate on Newegg or Amazon.

However, Microsoft crippled Ultimate by putting in the 1-VM restriction. Considering how much Ultimate cost, this was a really cheap move on Microsoft's part.

> It's a shame that Google Maps is inferior to my iGo tablet running Windows Mobile from 10 years ago. And it didn't need to have continuous wireless data access. ... How was iGo capable to deliver superior maps so many years ago?

They purchased data from a mapping company. Ten years ago, the two largest mapping companies in the world were Navteq and Tele Atlas. Google used to buy data from these companies as well, but they stopped paying and decided to build up their own maps data from scratch.

> Even Bing's Maps are more usable.

If you zoom to Sarajevo and look at the bottom-right of the Bing Maps window, it says: "© 2015 HERE. © 2015 Microsoft Corporation."

Navteq was bought by Nokia, got renamed HERE Maps, and has just been sold to a consortium of German automakers.

Microsoft currently has a multi-year contract with HERE Maps as part of their deal with Nokia. Also, Helmut Panke is on the Microsoft Board of Directors. He used to be the Chairman of the Management Board of BMW.