Disney has been taking more risks lately. A gutsy move to rename its Rapunzel movie “Tangled” to play down the princess paid off with stellar Thanksgiving ticket sales, for instance. But “Tron” marks one of its biggest movie gambles ever, not only because of its huge production and marketing cost (an estimated $150 million globally) but because Disney has moved forward with spinoffs — “Tron: Uprising,” an ambitious animated series for Disney Channel and Disney XD, is already deep in production — without waiting to see how the film is received.

“Tron: Legacy,” written by the “Lost” alumni Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, also revisits sacred ground for science fiction fans. The first “Tron,” released by Disney in 1982, was a box office disappointment (as was “Blade Runner” that same year), but its computer-generated effects and story line — a hacker is pulled inside a computer and forced to play space-age gladiator games — deeply influenced a generation of techies.

“It’s a science-fiction story that actually came true: inside a computer is a world

[edit] I'm very stressed out because I just got banned.... AGAIN![/edit]

Dog is the common use term that refers to members of the subspecies Canis lupus familiaris. The term can also be used to refer to a wider range of related species, such as the members of the genus Canis, or "true dogs", including the wolf, coyote, and jackals; or it can refer to the members of the subfamily Caninae, which would also include the African wild dog; or it can be used to refer to any member of the family Canidae, which would also include the foxes, bush dog, raccoon dog, and others.[8] Some members of the family have "dog" in their common names, such as the raccoon dog and the African wild dog. A few animals have "dog" in their common names but are not canids, such as the prairie dog.

The English word dog comes from Middle English dogge, from Old English docga, a "powerful dog breed".[9] The term may derive from Proto-Germanic *dukkōn, represented in Old English finger-docce ("finger-muscle").[10] The word also shows the familiar petname diminutive -ga also seen in frogga "frog", picga "pig", stagga "stag", wicga "beetle, worm", among others.[11] Due to the archaic structure of the word, the term dog may ultimately derive from the earliest layer of Proto-Indo-European vocabulary, reflecting the role of the dog as the earliest domesticated animal.[12]

In 14th century England, hound (from Old English: hund) was the general word for all domestic canines, and dog referred to a subtype of hound, a group including the mastiff. It is believed this "dog" type of "hound" was so common it eventually became the prototype of the category “hound”.[13] By the 16th century, dog had become the general word, and hound had begun to refer only to types used for hunting.[14] Hound, cognate to German Hund, Dutch hond, common Scandinavian hund, and Icelandic hundur, is ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European *kwon- "dog", found in Welsh ci (plural cwn), Latin canis, Greek kýōn, Lithuanian Å¡uõ.[15]

In breeding circles, a male canine is referred to as a dog, while a female is called a

The dog (Canis lupus familiaris[1]) is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The domestic dog has been the most widely kept working, hunting and companion animal in human history. The word "dog" may also mean the male of a canine species,[2] as opposed to the word "b****" for the female of the species.[3]

The dog quickly became ubiquitous across world cultures, and was extremely valuable to early human settlements. For instance, it is believed the successful emigration across the Bering Strait might not have been possible without sled dogs.[4] Dogs perform many roles for people, such as hunting, herding, protection, assisting police and military, companionship, and, more recently, aiding handicapped individuals. This impact on human society has given them the nickname "Man's best friend" in the western world. Currently, there are estimated to be 400 million dogs in the world.[5]

Over the 15,000 year span the dog had been domesticated, it diverged into only a handful of landraces, groups of similar animals whose morphology and behavior have been shaped by environmental factors and functional roles. As the modern understanding of genetics developed, humans began to intentionally breed dogs for a wide range of specific traits. Through this process, the dog has developed into hundreds of varied breeds, and shows more behavioral and morphological variation than any other land mammal.[6] For example, height measured to the withers ranges from a few inches in the Chihuahua to a few feet in the Irish Wolfhound; color varies from white through grays (usually called "blue'") to black, and browns from light (tan) to dark ("red" or "chocolate") in a wide variation of patterns; coats can be short or long, coarse-haired to wool-like, straight, curly, or smooth.[7] It is common for most breeds