This Week I Learned - Week #128

This Week I Learned -

* Azure Access Control Service (ACS) is going to be merged with Azure AD

* Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is Microsoft’s multi-tenant cloud based directory and identity management service. Azure AD runs out of 28 data centers around the world with automated failover.

* ADAL JS is the JavaScript version of our Active Directory Authentication Library – a set of developer libraries that offer you a consistent way of connecting your apps to Active Directory on your platform of choice.

* Starting in October 2015, Azure SQL Database Update (V12) will be the new default for logical servers.

* Azure Media Services supports PlayReady DRM encryption. Fairplay is DRM encryption used in iTunes.

* SQL Server Express uses dynamic ports for communications. You cannot use this over a Azure Hybrid Connection

* Bitnami offers a pre-configured, ready to run image on VM Depot for running ThinkUp on Microsoft Azure. ThinkUp is a free, open source web application that captures all your activity on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Foursquare.

* The System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) generalizes the operating system image on the reference computer, to remove machine-identifying data and enable the image to run on other bare metal machines. Using Sysprep, you can fully automate a Windows installation so that no user input is required.

* Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or  Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs).

* GDELT Project uses some of the world's most sophisticated natural language and data mining algorithms to extract more than 300 categories of "events" and the networks of people, organizations, locations, themes, and emotions that tie them together. Today the GDELT Project consists of over a quarter-billion event records in over 300 categories covering the entire world from 1979 to present, along with a massive network diagram connecting every person, organization, location, and theme to this event database. The entire GDELT database is 100% free and open

* 3.5 million digitized books stretching back two centuries, encompassing the complete English-language public domain collections of the Internet Archive (1.3M volumes) and HathiTrust (2.2 million volumes), have been processed using the GDELT Global Knowledge Graph and are now available in Google BigQuery.

* Even the most devastating international crises receive a news attention span of just up to 2 weeks

* Some humans can echolocate like bats & dolphins

* The forelimbs of Birds, which correspond to human arms or to the fore-legs of quadrupeds, have been evolved to serve as perfect organs of propulsion through the air. Many of their larger bones are hollow and often have air sacs running into them, which, as mentioned above, function principally as accessory respiratory organs. This makes for lightness without sacrificing strength, and is a special adaptation to facilitate aerial locomotion. Modifications in the structure of the breast bone, pectoral girdle and other parts of the skeleton, and the enormously developed breast-muscles enable a bird to fly in the air. It has been estimated from analogy with birds that a man, to be able to lift himself off the ground by his own effort, would require breast muscle at least 4 feet deep! - Book of Indian Birds, Salim Ali

* Before he was even old enough to legally sign the incorporation papers, Walt Disney wrangled a few friends together, raised some cash and started Laugh-o-Gram, a studio in Kansas City, Mo., that made comic cartoon shorts based on fairy tales. But he seemed less interested in making money than in having fun, and the company promptly went bankrupt, sending Disney, by then 21, to Los Angeles to look for work in the film industry

* 52 percent of companies that were in the Fortune 500 list fifteen years ago, no longer exist

* Seven is a symbolic number found in nature, there are seven oceans, seven hills, seven colors in the rainbow...