When looking for free DVD player downloads, you should check what you have inside your computer already, because you may end up with a few big surprises! Don't worry, I am not going to state the obvious here - we all know that Windows Media Player is capable of playing DVDs, but it's far from being perfect, and - if you ask me - its interface leaves a lot to be desired. Even worse, Windows Media Player doesn't exactly come for free, since you need Windows to run it, so let's get busy going through a few free DVD player downloads for everyone, with some of them being available on all platforms, just as...

...VLC is! Don't know what VLC stands for? VLC media player is a cross-platform media player AND a streaming server, coming with support for an impressive amount of audio and video formats, and the downloads counter on its official website is getting closer to the 100,000,000 mark!

Its interface is rather basic, and most people may find themselves lost inside VLC's maze of settings, but there are a lot of rewards coming with this program, like speed, portability (most video and audio file work without the need of installing any additional codecs), and a very nice feature for the Mac version, that allows you to browse Internet TV and Radio stations. Priceless!<-336x280 Large Rectangle - right->

VLC is free to download and use for all platforms you can think of, and a few extra ones, and some of its minor drawbacks, apart from the user friendliness missing in action, are the inability to jump inside FLV files, some minor issues with DVD menus that occur sometimes, and poor performance when playing HD MKV files. All in all, VLC is a great choice!

The interesting part is that, where VLC fails, GOM Player fills the gap wonderfully. For example, this one has much easier to use image and sound adjustments, it easily jumps through FLV files, and also plays DVDs pretty well. Unfortunately, it's only available for Windows, and sometimes needs codecs, when VLC doesn't. Well, nothing is perfect, but VLC + GOM Player is one of the best "2 in 1" free DVD player downloads you can get!

Both players above can handle incomplete or damaged AVI files, and they are both free to download and use. Unfortunately, Mac and Linux users will have to be happy with VLC and other programs, but both platforms have a pretty rich offering of free DVD player downloads, so it's not a hopeless cause.

At last, I have to tell you about one of the favorite free DVD player downloads of my friends, namely KM Player. This one is probably worth more than VLC + GOM Player, only that I didn't manage to dig in deeper just yet. Since this is also a free program, I am talking about its value in features, of course, and here's what you can get with it: compatibility with an impressive number of video and audio formats, including QuickTime, RealMedia and DVDs, as well as the capability of capturing audio, video, and screenshots, audio and video effects, a wide range of skins, and an insane amount of settings. Despite the above, it still manages to be quite user friendly, and since it's free...I hope you know what to do!

My friends, these are the free DVD player downloads I've been able to offer you today. If I think well, you don't even need more than the above, but if you do, just ask...I got a feeling some may need DVD ripping and burning tools, and that's something not too easy to find in the free DVD player downloads realm...

Sometimes, I don't have a clue when things should be obvious, but at least I am lucky this doesn't happen too often. I won't give you any detailed examples regarding the above, but I think it's enough to say that once, it took me about 5 years to notice a scratch. Well, at least I understand jokes faster than most blondes...but I must confess that, if one would come to me and tell me "Free the Airwaves," I wouldn't guess in a million years that this is something closely related to Google. Fortunately, I have Google to find out a lot of things, and so we can easily talk about FreeTheAirwaves.com or .org!

"One of America's most valuable natural resources is our "white spaces" -- the radio airwaves, or spectrum, that have long carried analog TV signals. Three-fourths of the white spaces are completely unused today, and -- especially once TV is broadcast in digital only starting in 2009 -- could be used to kick-start a revolution in wireless technology, including universal wireless online access and numerous new products and services that can't even be imagined today."

Well, it may be true that Google's Android didn't manage any breakthrough yet, but this initiative looks pretty interesting. Just read this: "This fall, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will decide whether to make this spectrum available for anyone to use.<-250x250 Square - right-> At Google, we think more open access to the white spaces is essential, not only for companies like ours, but for society in general. But this outcome is far from certain, so we've joined a broad coalition of public interest groups and industry peers who are working to convince the FCC to free the airwaves and unleash the next generation of Internet innovation. We hope you'll add your voice to the debate by signing our petition and helping spread the word about this campaign."

So...can I have some broadband wireless for myself? Yummieee! It's not exactly like that, but...

"Google launched this website because we believe strongly that freeing the white spaces is crucial to the future of the Internet. Make no mistake: open access to this unused bandwidth would surely be good for our own bottom line (not to mention those of many of our industry peers); better access to the Internet means more people doing web searches and using our software products."

In the end, this will also accelerate the growth rate of portable computers' market share, I think. After all, what could be better than have 100% free WiFi coverage? 3G coverage for your iPhones, I know, but that's not the point now...

For now, this is only about signing a petition, and making yourself heard, but the future may prove extremely interesting for Google and those following them in the "Airwaves Initiative," if I can call it this way...

My friends, here's a good question from a special category of issues everyone is trying to solve, especially those new users in the emerging Internet countries that just got their hands on this wonderful resource we all know as the World Wide Web! Unfortunately, giving a good answer to those asking "Where can I watch movies absolutely free?" is not such an easy task, because there are a lot of traps on the way to the truth. The first trap a lot of them fall into is to simply type "free movies," "download movies for free," or even "Where can I watch movies absolutely free?" in a certain search engine, and wait for the results to drop in...

Obviously, the results to the questions above will be quickly delivered by the search engine, as long as your Internet connection is not incredibly slow, but you'll usually end up downloading illegal content, if you manage to download something. Absolutely free movies are available on the Web, but they don't show up when you get to search answers for the logical questions, so let's see some "replacements," shall we?

"Free Online TV" may not be that close to "Where can I watch movies absolutely free?" as some may think, but it gets the job done. <-336x280 Large Rectangle - right->Apart from various live streaming sites that you may find(not that easy, anyway, because most of them also provide paid content, and the free user experience may be rather frustrating), there are a bunch of interesting programs, like Joost, Miro(formerly known as Democracy Player), and even paid programs like ChrisTV PVR, but...since the question we started with contains "absolutely free," I guess this one doesn't qualify...

More and even better than live streaming sites, you have the community-driven video sites we all got to know about when YouTube became popular, and now there's an incredible amount of them available, with Metacafe, Vimeo, or Vreel, currently still 2 weeks away from the launch into a new Beta version, just waiting for your visit!

Other than the above, let me give you one idea - try to sneak in your neighbors' backyard and watch their movies through the window, if their TV set is properly seated. If not, cook something nice and go to their door, right when they come home with the last movies they have rented. Well, that's not really "absolutely free," but should get the job done, and increase your charisma in the neighborhood, too!

At last, you could consider borrowing movies from your friends - that's usually free, but leaves you with a debt that needs to be repaid one day...

I know all the above may not be that much, but if you know more than I do, feel free to answer the big question - "Where can I watch movies absolutely free?..."

If you ask me about the disadvantages of open source software now, I can say there are two facts I really don't like about it. First, you can't eat it, and second, you can't drink it. I am not joking, because that's what I can tell you for now. Why? Well, I am not a programmer, and for most computer users, there's no big difference between open source and freeware. After all, you get the program for free, install it, play with it for as long as you like, no matter if it's freeware, or open source, but for programmers, there's a big difference. While freeware applications don't usually give you the chance to go through their source code and even modify it, the open source ones allow you this, and even more, in some cases. Now, it seems things in the open source world are slowly changing, as we're going to see right away...

OK, so where were we? Oh, yeah, disadvantages of open source software! A recent US federal court has just ruled that the holder of a copyright to some code made available for free download can enforce an "open source copyright license" to control future use of its work. As strange as it may seem, open source proponents have argued that those who don't comply with the conditions should be subject to copyright infringement claims. Say whaaaaat? I know I may not be that deep into open source, but there's one thing I am sure of - I don't like the way this sounds! Not at all!<-250x250 Square - right->

It all started with Robert Jacobsen, a hobbyist who made software used for model trains. Obviously, free software, but he ended up bringing copyright infringement claims against developers of commercial products, as they didn't follow the terms of his programs' license.

After being rejected by a lower court, Jacoben got his claims finally fulfilled, in a court decision described as "a fantastic ruling" by his lawyer. According to Victoria Hall, Jacobsen's lawyer, the decision "shows that open-source groups can protect their code under copyright laws, and this is a ruling that other open-source groups can use."

In the end, I think it all ends well. I may have been a bit in a hurry to draw my conclusions - the open source movement can sleep well, as long as they are not going to steal code and turn it into commercial products without following the Artistic License. Anyway, this is only my opinion, so if you know more, or would like to say something, go ahead - I am "all ears!"

...right from NVIDIA! I am sure that thousands of people are looking to download free computer games, but too many of them end up with...well, not-so-legal downloads, and of those, a very large number are also infected with various viruses. If we look at this whole matter and say the truth and nothing but the truth, there are only a few free computer games really worth your time. Don't get me wrong - I've seen a lot of promising ones, but most of them have been in the "eternal Beta stage" for a few years, and then simply faded away. The good part is that, when the battle for hardware supremacy enters the scene, providing free games for download turns into something really easy to do for the big ones, as it just happened with NVIDIA on Tuesday...

...when they announced a bunch of free computer games, all available for free download! Obviously, this is not something done only because NVIDIA loves its customers so much, but because Microsoft agreed to support the Havok phsyics technology in its upcoming games, pushing NVIDIA aside, if I can say it this way.<-336x280 Large Rectangle - right->

As I was expecting, this is not just general computer software - most of the applications available for free download are optimized for NVIDIA's PhysX technology, and the free applications pack comes at the same time as a free trial of Badaboom, a little video transcoder that used the CUDA technology of the GeForce 8-series GPUs, cutting the time necessary for transcoding a video file by up to 18 times, as Elemental Technologies claims.

Here's the list of goodies NVIDIA has for us:

- "Warmonger, a full free game. Destroy walls, floors, and whole buildings to open up new paths or close existing ones. Destructive power is more than eye candy here—it's a tactical weapon in this ground-breaking action game.

- Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Pack—includes three maps with amazing effects that fundamentally change the gameplay (requires full version of Unreal Tournament 3)

- A sneak peek at the upcoming Nurien social networking service, based on the Unreal Engine 3 (with built-in benchmark)

- A sneak peek at the upcoming game Metal Knight Zero (with built-in benchmark)

- All new Nvidia 'The Great Kulu' tech demo that showcases the use of PhysX soft bodies in a real game play environment

- All new Nvidia 'Fluid' tech demo—a simulation of realistic fluid effects with a variety of liquids."

These being said, get ready to download free computer games, the right way. Good luck!