Hacking kingpin jailed

Prolific malicious hacker Max Ray Vision has been jailed for 13 years over a series of credit card scams that cost US banks an estimated $86 million, reports The Register.

Vision (aka Iceman), 37, was also ordered to pay $27.5 million in compensation to his victims by senior US district judge Maurice Cohill Jr during a sentencing hearing. Vision, who has been kept in detention since his arrest in 2007, pleaded guilty to a string of computer hacking and fraud offences last year.

Highlights of Vision's life of crime include establishing CardersMarket, an online hangout for carders, crackers, scammers and other assorted denizens of the digital underground.

Verizon Wireless is on schedule to offer its 4G wireless service later this year, says the company's chief technology officer, writes CNET.

Dick Lynch, an executive VP and CTO for Verizon Communications, says Verizon Wireless is in the final testing phase of its commercial Long-Term Evolution (LTE) service.

Initially, Verizon Wireless will offer USB air cards that access LTE for its laptop customers. Cellphones and other mobile devices with embedded LTE will be introduced later.

Capcom is bringing brawler Street Fighter IV to Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch in March, says USA Today.

Images featured on IGN's Web site feature the franchise's signature fighters, Ken and Ryu. No word yet on which other brawlers will appear on the iPhone release.

Controls will consist of a virtual pad and four buttons sitting on the iPhone touch-screen. Two buttons serve as a player's "punch" and "kick", and sit alongside an "SP" and "S" button, which could presumably control character's Super and Special (Ultra) moves.

The scientist behind the so-called "climate-gate" e-mail scandal now admits there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995, reports Fox News.

Professor Phil Jones also says scientists are unsure whether the medieval warm period was actually warmer than current temperatures.

Some sceptics say it is the first time a senior scientist working with the UN report on climate change has admitted the possibility that the time between 800 and 1300 AD could have actually been warmer than present temperatures. That would be a blow to global warming believers.