Friday, March 14, 2008
Fox
Most foxes live 2 to 3 years, but they can survive for up to 10 years or even longer in confinement. Foxes are generally smaller than other members of the family Canidae such as wolves, jackals, and domestic dogs. Fox-like features naturally include an acute muzzle and thick tail. Other physical characteristics vary according to their territory. For example, the fennec has large ears and short coat, whereas the Arctic fox has small ears and thick, insulating hair.
Another example is the red fox which has a typical auburn pelt, the tail normally ending with white marking. Unlike many canids, foxes are regularly not set animals. Typically, they are private, opportunistic feeders that hunt live prey. Using a pouncing technique practiced from an early age, they are usually able to kill their prey speedily. Foxes also gather a wide variety of other foods ranging from grasshoppers to fruit and berries.
Foxes are usually extremely wary of humans and are not kept as pets; however, the silver fox was productively domesticated in Russia after a 45 year selective propagation program. This selective breeding also resulted in physical and behavioural traits appearing that are recurrently seen in domestic cats, dogs, and other animals: pigmentation changes, floppy ears, and curly tails.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
DVD
DVD (also known as "Digital Versatile Disc") is a popular ocular disc storage media format. Its main uses are video and data storeroom. Most DVDs are of the same dimensions as compact discs (CDs) but store more than six times as much records.
Variations of the term DVD often depict the way data is stored on the discs: DVD-ROM has data which can only be read and not written, DVD-R and DVD+R can be written once and then functions as a DVD-ROM, and DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW holds data that can be erased and thus re-written multiple times. The wavelength used by standard DVD lasers is 650 nm.
DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs correspondingly refer to properly formatted and structured video and audio content. Other types of DVDs, including those with video content, may be referred to as DVD-Data discs. The term "DVD" is commonly misused to refer to high definition ocular disc formats in general, such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. As a result, the original DVD is sometimes called SD DVD.