All posts by kewl

ADSL pricing in Luxembourg

Here’s a brief overview of the different ADSL offers in Luxembourg:

First, every company propose the following bandwidth:
Small: 1 Mbit/s download, 128 kbit/s upload.
Middle: 2 Mbit/s download, 192 kbit/s upload.
Large: 3 Mbit/s download, 192 kbit/s upload.

Now, let’s compare the prices in €:

Operator Small Middle Large Notes
P&T 29 (1 GB) 47 (15 GB) 79 (25 GB) Limited in traffic, then 0.003 €/MB
Cegecom 38 (15 GB) 42 (25 GB) 71 (40 GB) Traffic based, extra traffic charged € 0.003/MB
Fixed IP address for € 29/month plus € 109 for setup.
Visual Online 42 71 100 Flat rate, Fixed IP address for € 29/month plus € 109 for setup.
Netline 42 71 99 Flat rate, Fixed IP address for € 29/month plus € 109 for setup.
Alternet 30 60 98 Flat rate, Package with fixed IP address and 1 domain hosting for € 150.
Luxembourg Online 29 45 70 Flat rate. Extra € 6 if you do not want to use them for telephony.
Tele 2 24 40 65 Flat rate.
DSL4all 24 40 66 Flat rate.

Requirements are an analog phone line: € 19 (€ 17 for Cegecom) or ISDN (~€ 22) for every provider. Some of them require also to sign a telephone calls contract that routes all your phone calls via them. Also, some prices might not include the ADSL line while some others do. Prices were checked on their Website on January 2nd, 2006. I forgot to check what prices include VAT and not…

The most amazing is the cost of a fixed IP address. My only question is where is competition in there?

PS: Happy New Year 🙂

I love mod_rewrite!

As described on Apache Website:
“The great thing about mod_rewrite is it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail. The downside to mod_rewrite is that it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail.”
— Brian Behlendorf
Apache Group

The URLs like /blah/english/category2/view2 look some much nicer than /blah/script.xxx?category=2&view=2&lang=en !

By the way, I got about 2000 hits this month on this page so if you are a regular reader, I’d be glad if you could comment a hello for example, you do not need to register to post. Thus, I’ll have an idea if someone’s reading this text or only bots are indexing it… Am I wasting my time typing this? To finish, I have an idea for this blog’s design, thanks to oswd!

Is Free Software going to be illegal in France?

While reading the FSF France website, it seems that the French government could declare free software illegal.

On Friday November 18th, 2005, at the ministry of culture, phonographic lobbying group declared to free software actors: “You are going to change your licenses.” and “You are going to stop publishing your software.”. They declared they would sue any author who gives his source code if the amendment “VU/SACEM/BSA/FT Division Contenus” would be voted.

Publishing free software allowing to access to culture is going to be a counterfeiter offence; any software allowing download such as instant messengers or any server software (P2P, HTTP, FTP, SSH, …). Any network software would require spyware ala Microsoft, Sony or Apple or would be declared illegal. Originally written by Videndi Universal, this amendment has been improved by other members of the Sirinelli comission, for the Higher Council of Literature and Artistic Property.

I believe this won’t work; if they would vote such a law, they’d kill their economy; on the other hand it was a crime to use cryptography a few years ago in this protectionist country where politicians “seek refuge behind old barriers and old ideas”. À suivre…

Updated information can be found here: http://eucd.info/index.php?English-readers.

Vancouver, here I come!

Booked my flights 🙂

From: Luxembourg (LUX), Sunday, october 30th 10:40
To: Frankfurt Int’l (FRA), Sunday, october 30th 11:30

From: Frankfurt Int’l (FRA), Sunday, october 30th 12:25
To: Vancouver Int’l (YVR), Sunday, october 30th 13:50

From: Vancouver Int’l (YVR), Sunday, october 13th 11:10
To: Trudeau (YUL), Montreal, Canada, Sunday october 13th 18:54

From: Trudeau (YUL), Montreal, Canada, Friday, october 18th 18:40
To: Frankfurt Int’l (FRA), Saturday november 19th 08:00

From: Frankfurt Int’l (FRA), Saturday, November 19th 09:20
To: Luxembourg (LUX), Saturday, November 19th 10:00

If you travel on the same flight(s), we could discuss a bit 🙂