@dlin: it doesn't works because URL helper has been "improved" lately, in case you were asking yourself.
PS: sadly if you put "web2py pagination" on google, the first link that appears is from mengu.net and that implementation is wrong, also if the analysis is correct. limitby works like python slices, not in the way SQLians thinks in terms of offset and limit. I just sent a comment with the correction, hopefully he'll correct that page.