What "most" of the people here want, and forgive me if I'm bringing in anyone who disagrees, is to make sure neither Comcast nor the govt gets to filter traffic or somehow tamper with any data passing a network.

QoS has been brought into this and it is a legitimate issue but there is a difference between QoS for VoIP vs other traffic, and QoS for sites who pay up vs those who don't. QoS wouldn't be an issue if last-mile ISPs had the bandwidth they purport to have where all users get to max out their connection if they want or need to.

On the other side there is the concern that government will create rules allowing them to censor content. A well-founded concern, given the ICE's recent takeover of various sites and the pressures applied against several news organizations and banks.

So, again, net neutrality is needed, and all proponents are asking for is that neither the govt nor the ISPs get to mess with the bits on the wire.

You won't have problems if you aren't "loud" as being quiet is pretty much the norm there. They also tend to judge on a personal basis, so you shouldn't have problems with people stereotyping you though there is always the oddball.

Being from an eastern-European country myself, I would advise against moving to anything east of Italy or Hungary. Things are improving in those countries, but they are nowhere near as good as the USA at the moment. Corruption is the way things get done there, and EU membership isn't helping for some of the newest members. Croatia is not even a member for that exact reason.

You should be OK in most of Western Europe and I can personally vouch for Switzerland. If you can, try to find a few people from these countries (through social networking sites, etc) and ask them specific questions you have. They'll probably tell you if there's anything you should really know about before settling down there.

Comcast is not officially preventing any services from their network, although they were caught throttling bittorrent traffic in the past.

I've had an Asterisk PBX running on a Comcast account for several years with few to no problems so far. However, Comcast has an interest in degrading SIP as well as video services from 3rd party providers since they provide both of these themselves.

The fact that the telcos are cheering means today's legislation favors content discrimination and they'll no doubt be taking advantage of it soon.

I guess we should enjoy these multimedia services while they last, and that won't be long.

I am personally looking at moving back to Europe which is where I was born, even though I'm a US citizen now. Same reason as yours.

One piece of advice, don't announce the fact you are an American if/when you get to Vancouver. We are not well liked by either Europe or Canada, so make sure you get to know your company well before announcing that to them, lest a cop there decides to get personal with you.

I have actually been harassed at more than one European airport after showing a US passport, so the warning is not purely theoretical.

I have considered doing the same, and I have had a cop actually point a gun at me, hands shaking, because he thought I had stolen a car. Of course I hadn't, and the fact that I was walking and had no car keys on me did not help.

Just asked a Canadian friend of mine, he states it is legal to tape cops there, at least in public. He also says the same cops get quite brutal with certain "troublesome" minorities in the area. He lives around Toronto.

TFA also states one of the victims was arrested for videotaping the cops inside his home, and that the home happened to have a sign stating the premises are under video surveillance. Quote:

In 2006 Michael Gannon of Nashua, New Hampshire, was arrested for recording police in his own home, despite having a warning posted that the premises were monitored by a surveillance camera. And last July, 20-year-old Adam H. Whitman of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was arrested for recording cops who had raided a party where they suspected underage drinking. Both Gannon and Whitman were initially charged with felonies. Charges against both were later dropped.

It looks like there are places in the USA where right now you would be required to turn off any and all video surveillance (inside your own home) when the cops arrive, who are they free to beat the crap out of you if they feel like it. The felony charges will eventually (probably) get dropped, but you're still left with any abuse suffered.

I had a hard time explaining this even here on slashdot - that ISPs would not need to resort to QoS if the last-mile pipes are big enough to accomodate everyone connected. Instead they are not, the ISPs are oversubscribing and we get this funny situation of some users getting totally nowhere when the network gets congested.

I guess we can point out that people are now getting 30-100 Mbps in various countries while Comcast is still selling 3 Mbps service in much of the USA. It will at least show the alarming difference in the service here vs there. Oh wait... think that happened some time ago and was explained away by apologists.

Really, what will it take to get "most" people to agree that the ISPs are charging way too much and providing way too little vs the rest of the developed world?