Once again Java tops C as the number one sought after programming language on the internet.  According TIOBE Programming Community Index for February 2013 and five search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu, Java regained its position after being bumped by C in May 2012.

Despite the recent urging by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of computer users to disable or uninstall Java due to a flaw in Runtime Environment (JRE) 7, Java, has increased its market share of all languages by (+2.03%) in the past six months. The jump in Java’s popularity does not come as a surprise as the Android OS claims massive success in the mobile space.  The top twelve programming languages listed in the index are:

1.  Java
2.  C
3.  Objective-C 
4.  C++
5.  C#
6.  PHP
7.  Python
8.  (Visual) Basic
9.  Perl
10.  Ruby
11. Java Script
12. Visual Basic.NET

Also rising, Python and PHP which are competing to becoming the most popular interpreted language.

Let’s face it, fad or not, companies are starting to ask themselves how they could possibly use machine learning and AI technologies in their organization. Many are being lured by the promise of profits by discovering winning patterns with algorithms that will enable solid predictions… The reality is that most technology and business professionals do not have sufficient understanding of how machine learning works and where it can be applied.  For a lot of firms, the focus still tends to be on small-scale changes instead of focusing on what really matters…tackling their approach to machine learning.

In the recent Wall Street Journal article, Machine Learning at Scale Remains Elusive for Many Firms, Steven Norton captures interesting comments from the industry’s data science experts. In the article, he quotes panelists from the MIT Digital Economy Conference in NYC, on businesses current practices with AI and machine learning. All agree on the fact that, for all the talk of Machine Learning and AI’s potential in the enterprise, many firms aren’t yet equipped to take advantage of it fully.

Panelist,  Michael Chui, partner at McKinsey Global Institute states that “If a company just mechanically says OK, I’ll automate this little activity here and this little activity there, rather than re-thinking the entire process and how it can be enabled by technology, they usually get very little value out of it. “Few companies have deployed these technologies in a core business process or at scale.”

Panelist, Hilary Mason, general manager at Cloudera Inc., had this to say, “With very few exceptions, every company we work with wants to start with a cost-savings application of automation.” “Most organizations are not set up to do this well.”

Toshiba has released a new line of solid-state drives (SSD) using 19 nanometers, which is currently the industry’s smallest lithography process.

The lineup will include mini-SATA and 2.5-inch form factors along with drives in 7mm and 9.5mm heights. All drives will use the most current serial ATA 6Gbps interface protocol.

What is computer crime? Computer crime, often called “cyber crime” is any type of illegal activity that takes place on a computer with a network. Oftentimes, when you think of computer crime, you might picture a home user downloading a virus that wipes out his hard drive or spyware that hijacks her system for the purposes of spying. 

Computer crimes can also affect businesses too and they do, sometimes with devastating results. For example, in 2012, the IRS paid a whopping 5.2 billion dollars in tax refunds to identity thieves!

Protect your business and improve your bottom line by staying one step ahead of the cybercriminals.

5 Common Computer Crimes