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If I renember, there were sone very innovative things done with fractal immage compression, but it sorta dead-ended because of patent issues. see here

There is also internet.lu that is privately owned as far as I know and started off in the dial-up bussiness. (I worked there for a week, but quit because I didn't like it there) They offer both DSL and Cable.

On top of that you do have to remember that the salaries in Lux are quite high, and life is quite expensive in the first place. 50 Euro for a basic DSL package is probably way more affordable to a Luxembourgish inhabitant than 50Euro for a Jamaican inhabitant.

1. On a windsurfer, the wind pressure helps you balance. When a really big wave blocks the wind, it's close to impossible to balance with the additional sail.

That would only happen in an onshore wind.


2. The sail won't fit in a tube.


It has been done ;)

Not regularly though, and I'll give you that point.


3. You can't perform a number of maneuvers, because the sail is in the way.


Such as? Duck dives and tube rides are all I can think of, oh and maybe some old longboard stuff like hanging 10 (hang 5s can be done no problem) or hand stands etc.


4. The first close-out will smash your sail to bits.


Modern rigs are a lot tougher than you think, never mind having a good chance of outrunning a close-out anyway.


5. The sail is an incredibly dangerous piece of junk when the wave hits you the wrong way.

6. In some situations, the a sail can catapult you off the board. And I wouldn't want to be using a leash when this happens.


True, but most sail injuries would come from landing on it after a jump. I've seen a lot of surfers cut by their own board due to the leash. No leash on a windsurfer, you have to swap between goofy and normal when you change direction. A leash would just get in the way. Besides the sail stops the board getting washed too far (most of the the time hehe).

Windsurfing in waves can be fun. But we're talking about really big ones, where tow-in is necessary.

Most of the group that pioneered big wave tow-in at Jaws also windsurf the same spot. I haven't seen many photos of surfers hitting the lip there the way these guys do with a sail:
http://www2.vo.lu/homepages/tonnar/photos.htm
Not the best photos I could find at short notice - there seem to be suprisingly few good Jaws photos on the web.

Anyway I wasn't trying to compare surfing vs windsurfing (you don't get to be a really good wavesailor without being a good surfer too) - just pointing that if it's too big to paddle in, you don't have to be towed-in.

The best way to solve a given cube is called "God's algorithm" to us Rubik's geeks (I can average about 50 s. solving a cube, which is ok, but not phenomenal). It's 18 moves. The method behind it is far too complicated for a person to do without a computer to assist, but using a rather simple method, a person can very easily solve a cube in around 65 moves, but slowly. The record-breaking solution times are closer to a hundred moves, but rather than remembering a move-efficient but thought-intensive way to solve it, one remembers many more algos that whose situation can be recognized much more quickly.

And for the previous posts asking how long it takes a computer to do it... it's very, very low. Under a second. Many people can do it, manually (a computer just has to give the moves, it can ignore the time required to actually turn the cube) in under 20 seconds (For the people out there in disbelief, Dan Knights has a video of him actually doing it in 17, it's for real. I won't post the link, because I'm not going to be responsible for slashdotting his site).

There's a huge difference between a computer solving it "brute force", and a person or computer solving it through established algorithms. By brute force, just twirling the cube until the solution popped up, it would take on average however long it takes your computer to process half of the possible combinations. That's quite a long time. However, a computer solving a cube how we would, focusing on time rather than least amount of moves, could easily solve more than one a second.

If there is a cheaper one you can gladly inform me, but I have been with VO for over 5 years and their service is just excellent, that's why I didn't even research other options.

Compared to Belgium, France, and Germany paying 80Euro for a 256kbps/64kbps is *very* expensive because they have faster connection for the same price.

Why the hell did you go through all the trouble discovering where I live, anyway? It's not hard to find, but I was just wondering... You could at least have posted non-anonymously.

I really should have added a smiley to my post, as I was just gently joshing you rather than trying to make a massive point.

The Leonidas site now opens on a basic html page with a 'view our flash site' link in the center, the flash looked ugly and clunky, and doesn't do them any favours.

Guideroutier doesn't seem to have any flash at all, though...

But still, there are some wonderful flash sites out there that are a thousand miles away from what can be done in html. They are more like a work of art than a webpage. I admit that they are not particularly 'useful', but then how much of the web is useful? I don't consider Slashdot to be of much use to anyone (except the askers of Ask Slashdots, presumably). Here's another example of a fairly good looking html website that I don't think is particularly useful. ;)

Last time this whole flash/anti-flash argument raged on /. someone posted a link to a hotel booking scheme that ran in flash and made it a much more natural experience than messing with forms and such. It was a very intuitive interface that I don't think could be done anywhere near as well in html. Wish I had the bookmark, but I cleared it out a while ago.

The ISP I use actually had the slashdot headlines on their homepage up until recently. So I guess, some ISP's do know what it is (some geeks, must wander there, don't you think?). Now they give CNN headlines...*sigh*... Well it *is* an MS shop, so I guess IIS blocks slashdot ;-)