When a scientist witnesses Bruce Banner's transformation into an anger-fueled green giant in The Incredible Hulk, he calls it the most extraordinary thing he's ever seen.

The CGI spectacle starts with the classic green-eyed flash in the eyes of actor Edward Norton, who plays Banner, and moves impressively through vein-popping, muscle-roiling territory into all-out lab-trashing ferocity. It's the best screen presentation yet of the radiation-induced metamorphosis that turns the brooding Banner into the smash-prone Hulk, and the latest in a long line of silver-screen transformations in sci-fi and horror flicks.

From the The Fly's Brundlefly to the fleshy, obese explosion of Neo-Tokyo biker Tetsuo in Akira, here are some of the best.

Which unforgettable scenes did we leave out? Submit your faves in the comments below.

Left: The Incredible Hulk

Each time molecular scientist Bruce Banner, played by Ed Norton, forgets the cardinal rules of anger management, audiences are rewarded with his transformation into an enormous green brute.

The quintessential werewolf movies starring Lon Chaney as the Wolf Man used extensive camera trickery, yak hair and rubber prosthetics to produce the actor's full-body transition from man to wolf man.

David Cronenberg's 1986 sci-fi flick about a lab experiment gone horribly awry features one of the most memorable long-form transformations in movie history. When a fly zooms into the teleportation device used by scientist Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum, the results are disastrous. First the scientist gains superhuman strength and libido thanks to a dose of housefly DNA. Then, he quickly deteriorates into a jawless, decaying, acid-vomiting mess he calls Brundlefly. Ick.

Animal House director John Landis' 1980s comedy-horror film beats out its lupine brethren Teen Wolf, Wolven and The Howling purely for its lethal combo of camp and creep. The mixture of robotic and prosthetic body parts used in the extended lunar transformation sequences led the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to create an award for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup in 1981 -- and hand An American Werewolf in London the Oscar.

Shape-shifting supervillainess Mystique wowed fanboys and fangirls alike in 2000 with her seamless CGI transformations into various characters, and the blue-skinned bodysuit worn by former model Rebecca Romijn as the cerulean evildoer only added to the appeal.

Romijn works Mystique's magic in all three X-Men films before she's finally transformed into Raven Darkholme, after being injected with an antidote that suppresses her mutant X-gene.

When rebel biker Tetsuo Shima uncannily channels the psychic power of a superhuman 10-year-old by the name of Akira, he inherits kinetic powers beyond his bodily control.

The futuristic city of Neo-Tokyo is no match for Shima's grotesquely deformed body, which eventually becomes an obese blob of tentacles, mechanical parts and veiny appendages. Did we mention Akira was buried in a cryogenic chamber beneath an Olympic stadium nearly 40 years earlier? Yeah, he's that powerful.

Forget Spidey sense. When an extraterrestrial symbiotic life form takes up shop in Eddie Brock (played by Topher Grace), the slimy reporter becomes a powerful creature with superhuman strength and a mangled maw of pointy chompers.

Known as Venom, Brock resembles an evil, mirror image of Spider-Man, and he's hell-bent on conducting a vendetta against Spidey's alter ego, Peter Parker.

Though this film was ridiculed on Mystery Science Theater 3000, there's nothing funny about slowly liquefying into a gelatinous, murderous mass.

Steve West, the only surviving astronaut from an ill-fated mission to Saturn, begins a rapid descent into insanity and gloop upon his return to Earth. Before West disintegrates into a pile of red slush, viewers are treated to lengthy eyefuls of open sores, jellylike matter and bones in this late-'70s screen gem.

When Norwegian researchers awaken an alien being in Antarctica, they're probably hoping for a friendly creature a la E.T. the Extraterrestrial. Instead, they got the Thing. John Carpenter's 1982 creature feature revealed the darker side of an alien invasion -- a murderous, shape-shifting being able to infect and assimilate anything.

After swilling his highly addictive home-brew tonic, Dr. Jekyll (Fredric March) morphs into his skirt-chasing, hard-drinking alter ego in a transformation sequence that stunned movie audiences in 1931. With the help of camera tricks and lens filters, the kindly scientist devolved into the iconic Mr. Hyde on-screen.

Michael Bay's 2007 live-action adaptation of the cult classic '80s cartoon didn't shy away from full-frontal money shots of the army of Deceptacons and Autobots as they assembled. Though the 2007 movie adaptation included cameos from Starscream to Jazz, it was Optimus Prime's lengthy transition from red-and-blue cab into a massive, 20-foot-tall bipedal bot that stole the show.

Step aside, Silver Surfer. The upgraded T-1000 cyborg killing machine in James Cameron's 1991 Terminator sequel is able to mimic almost any shape, thanks to its poly-alloy molten-metal form. The T-1000's effortless mutation into other people and simple weapons creates one of the most terrifying -- and eye-popping -- movie villains ever.

If your town was bombed out of existence, would anyone care?

If you live in one of the dusty, poor corners of the world, maybe not. Carnage in developing countries often goes unnoticed in the more wired, wealthy parts of the world.

That's where the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences' Geospatial Technology and Human Rights Project comes in. It is charged with using the latest in technology, primarily high-resolution satellite photography, to detect and call attention to possible human rights violations.

"I don't consider what we look at to be war in the sense that it's two armies [or] groups of soldiers. These things are slaughters, genocides, butchery and the like," said Lars Bromley, director for the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program, who was profiled in Wired 15.12. "Women and children are the primary targets. It's rare we look at anything that approaches an actual battle."

This gallery presents a variety of before and after satellite photographs spanning the globe, including the most recent photographs from Ethiopia, which helped make the case for what Human Rights Watch declared "crimes against humanity" by government soldiers in the Ogaden region of the country. When before and after pictures are shown, the before shot is above the after shot.

Left: In this before-and-after sequence, you can see the aftermath of a visit by Ethiopian troops to the town of Labigah. In the after shot at the bottom, taken six months after the attack, Bromley's team counted dozens of destroyed buildings. Bromley believes that the blue-grey color of some rubble indicates the presence of ash.

"You still have apparent ash on the ground six months after the attack took place," he said. "It was probably a pretty significant burning event."

That's backed up by the team's ability to pull out the infrared signature from the raw satellite data, and in that spectrum, Bromley said that burned material has a distinctive spectral signature.

"Really what we do is stare at these things forever and verify each structure from one image to another," Bromley said.

Burma's military junta has long been suspected of waging a campaign of repression against its political adversaries in the state of Keren, which borders Thailand. In April, Bromley got reports that the town you can see in the top left image had been attacked. During a break in the monsoon-season clouds, a satellite snapped this shot of the village's former site. All that remains of the village is burn scars.

"This place was attacked and wholesale burned to the ground, which is relatively rare for Burma," he said. "Most of the attacks are shelling and mining and shooting."

Despite presenting this evidence in the United Nations, which caused an international stir, the government in Burma, also known as Myanmar, remains in power.

"We're getting images of human misery on pretty much a daily basis and where do we go from here?" Bromley asked. "Governments are less confident that they can hide these things, but they are more confident they can get away with it."

The settlement in the image pair at left shows burn scars for about 12 to 14 structures. This corresponds with reported attacks in the area on April 22, 2007 (Lat: 18.54 N Long: 97.05 E).

The before image was taken on Dec 13, 2006. The after image is from June 24, 2007.

In July 2006, intense fighting broke out between Israeli troops and the Hezbollah paramilitary group in Lebanon. As rockets rained down on northern Israel, the Israelis responded with a devastating aerial attack on Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut.

Referring to the neighborhood pictured here, Bromley said, "The so-called Hezbollah suburb in Beirut is the most catastrophic destruction we've ever looked at."

A strange amendment to the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act, which governs U.S. satellite image distribution, prevents the commercial distribution of high-resolution satellite images of Israel, so Bromley's team was unable to assess the damage that Hezbollah rockets did to Israeli towns. Human Rights Watch placed the death tolls of the short conflict at 1,200 Lebanese and 39 Israelis.

As an indication of scale, you can see a soccer field in the lower left-hand corner.

Pictured are close-up satellite images of part of Beirut City before (June 19, 2006) and after (August 12, 2006) attacks.

Since coming to power in 1980, Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist. These aerial photographs show the erasure of the town of Porta Farm, a settlement that had the bad luck of being in a known opposition area. Bromley wryly called it Mugabe's version of "gerrymandering."

"He destroyed all the homes, because if you don't have a home, you're not gonna vote there," he said.

While seeing the destruction can be easy once you know where to look, finding areas in distress can be difficult. And once they are found, local informants have to be very careful to avoid getting caught distributing this type of information.

"We had really good communications with the people inside, [who were] writing to us on Hotmail accounts in the middle of the night, that kind of stuff," Bromley said.

In February 2008, the Sudanese government launched a military campaign in Western Darfur to drive out rebels fighting under the name the Justice and Equality Movement. The images show the damage from a single town in the region, Abu Suruj. The areas in red show all of the areas that burned during the conflict.

A UN report on the attacks (.pdf) noted the Sudanese offensive included "aerial bombardments by helicopter gunships and fixed-wing aircraft." In addition to showing the ashy remains of homes, the close-up picture shows what is probably a rebel stronghold in the upper-right portion of the image. Crater impacts, probably from mortar fire, are visible within the ring-like defensive perimeter.

Back in 2000, during a two-year war between Ethiopia and Eritrea over what Bromley described as "literally 10 square miles of the most desolate place on Earth," Ethiopian troops occupied a portion of Eritrea. In the process, they destroyed several Eritrean towns. One of them, Serha, is shown in these images. The seven buildings clearly visible in the top photograph from June 2000 had been destroyed when a new satellite image was taken in August. These images were used in international legal proceedings against Ethiopia that resulted in a monetary settlement for Eritrea, which was never paid. Relations between the countries remain tense.

"The Ethiopians and Eritreans are about to go at it again, hammer and tongs," Bromley said.

He did note, however, that at least in the case of actual national armies, blame can be assigned to countries and politicians. That's not always an option that his team has.

"When you get into Darfur and some of these other places where it's just five thousand kids with guns, you get a more horrific medieval situation."

From 2000 to 2004, the Israeli Defense Forces began the construction of a security wall around Israel. As part of that effort, they removed about 2,500 homes in the Gaza Strip. "The Israeli security forces wanted to clear a perimeter and they went in with bulldozers and cleared what they needed to clear," Bromley said.

Bromley did note, however, that the missing buildings in this case were not caused by burning or bombing but by "bulldozers surrounded by tanks."

Satellite images of North Korean prison-labor camps, like this one, helped human-rights groups show the extent of what they called the "hidden gulag" system. By showing the images to escaped prisoners, the researchers were able to estimate the layouts and capacities of the camps. Their stunning estimate that 150,000 to 200,000 people were being held focused attention on the scale and gravity of the situation.

"Governments are less confident that they can hide these things," Bromley said.

But, he noted, atrocities that have long been documented in satellite images and from on-the-ground accounts still rage on.

"We're getting images of human misery on pretty much a daily basis," Bromley said. But his organization can't stop the fighting, and neither can nongovernmental organizations or (generally speaking) the UN.

"Have we ended all human suffering? No. Does that bother me? Yes," he concluded.

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So why was it Yahoo, not Microsoft, that revealed to the Wall Street Journal's Matt Karnitschnig that the latter was no longer interested in a full-blown acquisition of the former? Because Yahoo surely wanted to get the word out before any more shareholders punched their ballots, while Microsoft surely enjoyed the idea of Carl's slate getting as many votes as possible.

The Yahoo statement not only begs for the event to be seen as the end of the saga, but also for a good parsing.

Yahoo: Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company, today announced that discussions with Microsoft regarding a potential transaction -- whether for an acquisition of all of Yahoo! or a partial acquisition -- have concluded.

Translation: We're absolutely, positively sure that this time this is actually the end.

Yahoo: The conclusion of discussions follows numerous meetings and conversations with Microsoft regarding a number of transaction alternatives, including a meeting between Yahoo! and Microsoft on June 8th in which Chairman Roy Bostock and other independent Board members from Yahoo! participated.

Translation: We tried really hard. And adult supervision was present.

Yahoo: At that meeting, Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo!, even at the price range it had previously suggested.

Translation: We're still dreaming of $37 in May of 2008. They're now dreaming of $17 in May of 2009.

Yahoo: With respect to an acquisition of Yahoo!'s search business alone that Microsoft had proposed, Yahoo!'s Board of Directors has determined, after careful evaluation, that such a transaction would not be consistent with the company's view of the converging search and display marketplaces, would leave the company without an independent search business that it views as critical to its strategic future and would not be in the best interests of Yahoo! stockholders.

Translation: It was never consistent with that view, but we were willing to make that sacrifice to stay independent."

Yahoo: Yahoo! remains focused on maximizing value for stockholders by continuing to execute on its strategy of being the "starting point" for the most consumers on the Internet and a "must buy" for advertisers.

Translation: Though we've heard rumors another company may already occupy those positions.

Yahoo: The online advertising industry is projected to grow from $40 billion in 2007 to approximately $75 billion in 2010...

Translation: The growth of the industry will outpace our ongoing share losses within that industry.

Yahoo: ...and the company believes it has the right assets, strategic plan, Board of Directors and management team to capitalize on this growth opportunity.

Translation: It was all just a bad dream. We're so grateful to back in Kansas.

1983: Pioneer 10 becomes the first human-made object to pass outside Pluto's orbit and leave the central solar system.

Pioneer 10 must be considered one of the most successful spacecraft of all time. Designed for deep-space exploration, which at the time of its launch in 1972 meant pretty much anything beyond the moon, Pioneer 10 achieved a number of firsts while sending back valuable data along the way. Among the milestones:

Following liftoff, Pioneer 10 achieved a breakaway speed of 32,400 mph, making it the fastest human-made object to leave the Earth. It shot past the moon in a mere 11 hours and crossed Mars' orbit in just 12 weeks. By the time it reached Jupiter on Dec. 3, 1973, Pioneer 10 was moving along at a crisp 82,000 mph.

On July 12, 1972, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt. NASA described this as a "spectacular achievement" and, considering that asteroids the size of Alaska hurtle through the belt at 45,000 mph, there's no reason to dispute the claim.

Upon reaching Jupiter, Pioneer 10 sent back the first direct observations and close-up images of the solar system's largest planet. It was data from Pioneer 10 that confirmed that Jupiter is mostly a liquid planet.

After clearing Pluto's orbit (considered the boundary of the planetary solar system in the decades before astronomers decided Pluto isn't really a planet), Pioneer 10 continued to send back valuable data regarding solar wind, until its scientific mission ended in 1997.

All attempts to contact Pioneer 10 were terminated following the spacecraft's last transmission of telemetry data on April 27, 2002. Nevertheless, NASA's Deep Space Network received a final, faint signal on Jan. 22, 2003. It's been silence ever since.

Although lost to contact forever, Pioneer 10 continues its endless journey through interstellar space. It's headed in the general direction of Aldebaran, the brightest star in constellation Taurus, forming the bull's eye. According to NASA, it will take about 2 million years for Pioneer 10 to reach Taurus.

So Pioneer 10's mission, originally intended to go 21 months, lasted 25 years and change. As project manager Larry Lasher said, "I guess you could say we got our money's worth."

Source: NASA

Before you can take your rover to the moon, you need to test it on Earth.

This week, NASA engineers did just that at Grant County ORV Park in Moses Lake, Washington, which they chose for its similarity to the moon's terrain.

As NASA takes its first steps to establish a permanent lunar outpost -- the first step in a journey that will eventually take humans to Mars -- testing like this will be critical to the safety and success of its missions. It's been almost 36 years since humans were last on the moon, and under Project Constellation the next journey is planned for 2020. It may seem a long way off, but the timeline is short, given the work that needs to be done for such a monumental task.

Included in the tests were lunar rovers, robots, space suits and shelters. Click through the gallery to see this previously untested equipment in action. Take away the clouds and sky, and you can almost imagine how the actual mission will look.

Left: Adrian Emry, 7, of Moses Lake, gives a thumbs-up sign to NASA engineer Bill Welch after wrapping up a day of lunar-related experiments.

The NASA Autonomous Drilling Rover (Scarab) navigates a crater. The rover was built by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and is designed to drill up to a meter into the moon's polar regions.

This design won't actually be traveling to the moon, but it's an intermediary model for a future design that will. A drilling rover must be lightweight to conserve power but also strong enough to drill through the lunar rock (regolith).

The NASA ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) Rover is stated to be the vehicle of choice for future lunar explorers. The robot comprises a base and legs below an interchangeable cabin, which is mounted on top. The legs are quite versatile: They can walk across rocky terrain, step up ledges, lift payloads, drill and perform assembly tasks.

ATHLETE rovers can even work together to lift heavy objects with their well-articulated legs.

The ATHLETE's legs can also collapse entirely, gently lowering their payload to the moon's surface.

The NASA Lunar Crane is designed to be a lifting- and precision-positioning device to give astronauts a hand during early lunar outpost construction.

NASA engineers Bill Welch, left, and Kevin Groenman watch the K10 robot from the Crew Mobility Chassis during a test. The astronauts' perches can pivot 360 degrees providing the operators an excellent view of the surrounding landscape.

In order to keep the Crew Mobility Chassis from becoming stuck in lunar dust or barreling straight down a steep crater, each set of wheels on the truck can pivot individually in any direction. The vehicle can drive sideways, forward, backward and any direction in between, allowing it to zigzag down hills and parallel park at docking stations.

NASA engineer Bill Welch takes a moment to walk around the Crew Mobility Chassis and stretch.

NASA engineer Kevin Groenman photographs a test.

NASA engineer Kevin Groenman's visor reflects the control panel on the Crew Mobility Chassis.

NASA engineers Bill Welch, left, and Kevin Groenman discuss operations during a test on the sand dunes.

The NASA K10 lunar robot surveys simulated lunar landing sites. The robot runs on Red Hat Linux and performs highly repetitive, long-duration tasks such as site mapping and science reconnaissance that would be difficult for a human crew to conduct manually.

Little green men might shock the secular public. But the Catholic Church would welcome them as brothers.

That's what Vatican chief astronomer and papal science adviser Gabriel Funes explained in a recent article in L'Osservatore Romano, the newsletter of the Vatican Observatory (translated here). His conclusion might surprise nonbelievers. After all, isn't this the same church that imprisoned Galileo for saying that the Earth revolves around the sun? Doesn't the Bible say that God created man -- not little green men -- in his image?

Indeed, many observers assert that aliens would be bad for believers. Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research, once wrote that finding intelligent other-worldly life "will be inconsistent with the existence of God or at least organized religions." But such predictions tend to come from outside Christianity. From within, theologians have debated the implications of alien contact for centuries. And if one already believes in angels, no great leap of faith is required to accept the possibility of other extraterrestrial intelligences.

Since God created the universe, theologians say, he would have created aliens, too. And far from being weakened by contact, Christianity would adapt. Its doctrines would be interpreted anew, the aliens greeted with open -- and not necessarily Bible-bearing -- arms.

"The main question is, 'Would religion survive this contact?'" said NASA chief historian Steven J. Dick, author of The Biological Universe. "Religion hasn't gone away after Copernican theory, after Darwin. They've found ways to adapt, and they'll find a way if this happens, too," Dick says.

The central conundrum posed to Christianity by alien contact would involve the Incarnation -- the arrival of Jesus Christ as God's representative on Earth, his crucifixion and the absolution of humanity's sins through his forgiveness.

"It would still be true -- but if there are other races and intelligences, then what is the meaning of this visit to our race at that time?" asked Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno, who in 2005 penned the booklet Intelligent Life in the Universe?

Some propose that the Earthly incarnation of Jesus some 2,000 years ago redeemed all intelligent creatures, in all places and -- since a space-faring race is likely older than us -- in all times. Others have suggested that Jesus could take multiple forms.

"Just as Jesus is human like you and I, you would find an alien-specific Jesus," said Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary professor Ted Peters.

But Peters and others also say that aliens may not have fallen into sin, instead existing in a state of grace, neither having nor needing Jesus. In that case, missionaries would have no call to convert them.

"Would sin be the same on another planet as we conceive of it here? Would there even be sin, or would God be present to that species in a completely different way?" says Richard Randolph, a Kansas City University ethicist.

All this, however, assumes that humanity not only encounters new forms of life but also understands them. Other intelligences may be incomprehensible to us, thus intensifying another doctrinal question: What does it mean to be made, as the Bible proclaims, in God's image?

Many astrotheologians argue that God's image refers to our spiritual nature, with our physical forms being irrelevant. Not everyone, however, agrees.

"If there are aliens, the Bible specifically does not say that they were created in his image," said Mark Conn, pastor of the Noble Hill Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri. "God created many other intelligent beings on this planet, and they were not created in His image."

Conn's church recently met to discuss the issues posed by extraterrestrial contact, ultimately deciding that "if they're there, they're there. It doesn't change a whole lot."

Unlike Peters, Conn suggested that missionary work may be required, something the aliens may not welcome -- especially if, as many postulate, they are technologically superior to humanity and do not have religions of their own.

"Maybe they'll say that they used to need religion but have outgrown it. Some people say that would be a great blow to religion, because if an advanced civilization doesn't need it, why do we?" said Douglas Vakoch, director of interstellar message composition at SETI.

"I don't buy it, though. I think religion meets very human needs, and unless extraterrestrials can provide a replacement for it, I don't think religion is going to go away," he continued. "And if there are incredibly advanced civilizations with a belief in God, I don't think Richard Dawkins will start believing."

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Prime time is still the right time.

Early advertising sales by the broadcast networks have proved surprisingly strong, despite an economic slump, the writers' strike, and double-digit ratings declines for many shows this year.

"Broadcast TV is still the only game in town for the mass audience that advertisers want to reach," says Guy Rancourt, vice president and associate media director at Hill Holliday, a national group that buys advertising on behalf of corporate clients like CVS, Dunkin' Donuts, and Liberty Mutual.

That goes against predictions made by many in the industry in the weeks leading up to the ad sales known as the Upfronts, which largely wrapped up this week, that the market this year would be slower. The networks were expected to be forced to sell smaller percentages of their prime-time inventories because of a lack of demand.

Indeed, just a few weeks ago broadcast executives were struggling through Upfront presentations that were distinctly lacking in the glitz and glamour of previous years, with star-studded presentations and open-bar after parties falling by the wayside.

But sales for most of the networks are expected to rise from last year, thanks to a combination of increased ad rates and advertisers' willingness to buy more ad space earlier than last year.

NBC, which finished its Upfront sales last week, sold 80 percent of its prime-time ad inventory, up 3 to 4 percentage points over 2007, according to a spokeswoman. With that increase, ad sales for the network this year will total $1.9 billion, up $100 million over last year.

At ABC, which is still selling slots for prime-time sports programming and doesn't have a final tally, the network sold between 80 and 85 percent of its prime-time ad inventory, compared with 77 to 82 percent last year, and also expects a bump in overall sales from last year's $2.4 billion.

According to ad buyers and network spokespeople, advertisers were willing to buy more space than usual during network Upfront season because the "scatter" ad market—or ads sold from remaining inventory throughout the year—has been unusually expensive lately.

And, says one network representative, if the money shows up during Upfronts, the networks won't turn it away—especially since the economy may worsen, creating a tough environment for ad sales later in the year.

Fox declined to comment on Upfront sales, but it is widely expected to do better than last year's $1.9 billion, thanks in part to the 30 to 40 percent premiums levied on advertisers who will participate in the network's "Remote-Free TV" experiment this fall, which limits the number of companies allowed to hawk goods during two new dramas. CBS was predicted to match ABC's haul of about 2.5 billion.

The overall take for prime-time ad sales, including the CW, is expected to be $9.23 billion this year, up 1.2 percent over last year.

This year's apparent network Upfront motto? Die another day.

LifeLock, one of the companies that offers identity-theft protection in the United States, has been taking quite a beating recently. They're being sued by credit bureaus, competitors and lawyers in several states that are launching class action lawsuits. And the stories in the media ... it's like a piranha feeding frenzy.

There are also a lot of errors and misconceptions. With its aggressive advertising campaign and a CEO who publishes his Social Security number and dares people to steal his identity -- Todd Davis, 457-55-5462 -- LifeLock is a company that's easy to hate. But the company's story has some interesting security lessons, and it's worth understanding in some detail.

In December 2003, as part of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, or Facta (.pdf), credit bureaus were forced to allow you to put a fraud alert on their credit reports, requiring lenders to verify your identity before issuing a credit card in your name. This alert is temporary, and expires after 90 days. Several companies have sprung up -- LifeLock, Debix, LoudSiren, TrustedID -- that automatically renew these alerts and effectively make them permanent.

This service pisses off the credit bureaus and their financial customers. The reason lenders don't routinely verify your identity before issuing you credit is that it takes time, costs money and is one more hurdle between you and another credit card. (Buy, buy, buy -- it's the American way.) So in the eyes of credit bureaus, LifeLock's customers are inferior goods; selling their data isn't as valuable. LifeLock also opts its customers out of pre-approved credit card offers, further making them less valuable in the eyes of credit bureaus.

And, so began a smear campaign on the part of the credit bureaus. You can read their points of view in this New York Times article, written by a reporter who didn't do much more than regurgitate their talking points. And the class action lawsuits have piled on, accusing LifeLock of deceptive business practices, fraudulent advertising and so on. The biggest smear is that LifeLock didn't even protect Todd Davis, and that his identity was allegedly stolen.

It wasn't. Someone in Texas used Davis's SSN to get a $500 advance against his paycheck. It worked because the loan operation didn't check with any of the credit bureaus before approving the loan -- perfectly reasonable for an amount this small. The payday-loan operation called Davis to collect, and LifeLock cleared up the problem. His credit report remains spotless.

The Experian credit bureau's lawsuit basically claims that fraud alerts are only for people who have been victims of identity theft. This seems spurious; the text of the law states that anyone "who asserts a good faith suspicion that the consumer has been or is about to become a victim of fraud or related crime" can request a fraud alert. It seems to me that includes anybody who has ever received one of those notices about their financial details being lost or stolen, which is everybody.

As to deceptive business practices and fraudulent advertising -- those just seem like class action lawyers piling on. LifeLock's aggressive fear-based marketing doesn't seem any worse than a lot of other similar advertising campaigns. My guess is that the class action lawsuits won't go anywhere.

In reality, forcing lenders to verify identity before issuing credit is exactly the sort of thing we need to do to fight identity theft. Basically, there are two ways to deal with identity theft: Make personal information harder to steal, and make stolen personal information harder to use. We all know the former doesn't work, so that leaves the latter. If Congress wanted to solve the problem for real, one of the things it would do is make fraud alerts permanent for everybody. But the credit industry's lobbyists would never allow that.

LifeLock does a bunch of other clever things. They monitor the national address database, and alert you if your address changes. They look for your credit and debit card numbers on hacker and criminal websites and such, and assist you in getting a new number if they see it. They have a million-dollar service guarantee -- for complicated legal reasons, they can't call it insurance -- to help you recover if your identity is ever stolen.

But even with all of this, I am not a LifeLock customer. At $120 a year, it's just not worth it. You wouldn't know it from the press attention, but dealing with identity theft has become easier and more routine. Sure, it's a pervasive problem. The Federal Trade Commission reported that 8.3 million Americans were identity-theft victims in 2005. But that includes things like someone stealing your credit card and using it, something that rarely costs you any money and that LifeLock doesn't protect against. New account fraud is much less common, affecting 1.8 million Americans per year, or 0.8 percent of the adult population. The FTC hasn't published detailed numbers for 2006 or 2007, but the rate seems (.pdf) to be declining.

New card fraud is also not very damaging. The median amount of fraud the thief commits is $1,350, but you're not liable for that. Some spectacularly horrible identity-theft stories notwithstanding, the financial industry is pretty good at quickly cleaning up the mess. The victim's median out-of-pocket cost for new account fraud is only $40, plus ten hours of grief to clean up the problem. Even assuming your time is worth $100 an hour, LifeLock isn’t worth more than $8 a year.

And it's hard to get any data on how effective LifeLock really is. They've been in business three years and have about a million customers, but most of them have joined up in the last year. They've paid out on their service guarantee 113 times, but a lot of those were for things that happened before their customers became customers. (It was easier to pay than argue, I assume.) But they don't know how often the fraud alerts actually catch an identity thief in the act. My guess is that it's less than the 0.8 percent fraud rate above.

LifeLock's business model is based more on the fear of identity theft than the actual risk.

It's pretty ironic of the credit bureaus to attack LifeLock on its marketing practices, since they know all about profiting from the fear of identity theft. Facta also forced the credit bureaus to give Americans a free credit report once a year upon request. Through deceptive marketing techniques, they've turned this requirement into a multimillion-dollar business.

Get LifeLock if you want, or one of its competitors if you prefer. But remember that you can do most of what these companies do yourself. You can put a fraud alert on your own account, but you have to remember to renew it every three months. You can also put a credit freeze on your account, which is more work for the average consumer but more effective if you're a privacy wonk -- and the rules differ by state. And maybe someday Congress will do the right thing and put LifeLock out of business by forcing lenders to verify identity every time they issue credit in someone's name.

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Bruce Schneier is Chief Security Technology Officer of BT, and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.

The first spring-loaded Swiss Army knife, the Offiziersmesser, included a single knife blade, two screwdrivers, a can opener and an awl punch.

When it was registered as a trademark by Swiss-blade-craftsman Carl Elsener 111 years ago, no one would have believed that his simple multifunctional tool would dominate the survival/useful gadget market for more than a century.

Over the years, useful attachments ranging from spoons, forks, USB keys, toothpicks, lighters and compasses have all recessed quietly into the elegant steel handle with the familiar White Cross logo. What began with a few surgical instruments and razors led to a revolution characterized by three important qualities: Durability, portability and multiple-purpose utility.

Click through the gallery to see the Swiss Army knife's cultural impact and the current tools it inspired. (Do you have your own favorite multitool? Tell us about it in the comments.)

Left: The classic Swiss Army design for the 2008 collection contains a few more basic tools than the original design.

Cuban President Fidel Castro proudly holds up the Swiss Army knife he received as a gift from the Swiss Press Club on May 20, 1998, in the notoriously politically centrist city of Geneva, Switzerland. We’re guessing he used it to chop off the end of a fine Cuban cigar.

The toughest individuals in the world, as well as the not so rugged, carry Swiss Army knives. U.S. presidents have been known to cradle a Swiss Army in their pocket, and astronauts keep them in the space shuttle, just in case.

President Lyndon Johnson was known to commission thousands of personally engraved Swiss Army sets to be sent out to his friends and most loyal supporters.

Former President George Bush shows off the Swiss Army knife he received from Carl Elsener, chief of Victorinox, left, in Lugano, Switzerland, 2001. Carl is the descendant of founder Karl Elsener.

The Swiss Army knife was one of the first multifunction tools to be available to the public, and the knife's use on the battlefield contributed to its popularity, especially after World War II. The Victorinox Swiss Army Company is currently the most-recognized tool brand in the world.

The origin of the company’s success comes from an early modification by Karl Elsener. When building the first tool for the Swiss Army, he included a sharp-edged "erasing" blade that could be used to erase the pen handwritings of the Army officers. (He included the corkscrew later on, as a lifestyle-specific addition.)

Among the many top Swiss Army knives, the 24-tool Champion is often ranked among the most prized and efficient, but the craziest one of all has to be 2007's Swiss Army Knife XXL, left, (created by former rival Wenger, after its 2005 acquisition by Victorinox). Selected by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's Most Multifunctional Pen Knife, the XXL includes 87 tools and 141 functions. But doesn’t it defeat the spirit of the original's weightless portability?

One of the world's first true gadgets, the Swiss Army knife initiated the quest for the perfect multitool. Today, the dream of a unified tool is mostly fantasy, but there are tons of specialized innovations that follow in the spirit of the original Victorinox standard.

The Crank Brothers Multi-19 bicycle tool includes four different screwdrivers, a chain tool, seven different types of hex keys (all made out of superdurable high-tensile steel), a spoke and an open wrench. It's also ridiculously light at only one-third of a pound.

This type of tool is usually reserved for an emergency, but it’s indispensable for a quick adjustment or repair.

The Li'l Guppie looks like the metal, horror-movie version of the Nemo clownfish, but this little multitool is no joke. Based on a wrench platform and its older precursor, the Guppie, the Li’l Guppie is one of the most popular form factor tools today: keychain tools.

Even if you are disgusted by its unbearable cuteness, the number of features will undoubtedly win you over. Among its features are an adjustable wrench jaw, a blade made out of high-carbon stainless steel, a screwdriver tip, an additional Phillips screwdriver and a pocket clip. Not only that, but the tail end of the gadget serves as a bottle opener.

The Shopro multifunction hammer pushes the multitool outside the realm of knives, but also out of the realm of pockets. Not too many multitools provide the weight balance necessary to include a quality hammer. True, it won’t drive like a forged-steel sledgehammer, but it makes up for lack of strength with portability.

The Shopro is able to separate into two different sections, so when the torque (for the pliers) is applied to the connected sections around the handle, the grip functionality is transferred to the jaws. And it’s also very manageable -- it’s about the same size as a Wiimote.

The Shopro also includes pliers, a nail puller, large- and small-slotted screwdrivers, a serrated saw, a large and a small knife and a bottle opener.

The Leatherman is the brave multitool that dared to question the superiority of the Swiss Army knife as the best multitool out there, and lived to create its own niche. The four-inch long, 100 percent stainless steel Pocket Survival Tool was interesting from the beginning because it fit the needs of everyone from the construction worker to the weekend warrior, mainly because of the simple, durable pliers and the comfortable grip.

That first version also included wire cutters, a clip-point knife, a metal/wood file, a ruler, different screwdriver sizes and an awl punch -- all in a small container which rendered pocket-size the regular toolbox.

By the time Leatherman tools were selling over a million a year in 1993, and Keanu was using it to open elevator doors in Speed, the tool had become a household name.