knoledgesponge, your reply made my day, cause it's been a long time since western people portray lebanon to be muslim, extremist and violent. I'm sorry that Beirut is a bit expensive at the moment, the economy isn't at its best shape, but it's still WAY cheaper than places like cyprus or europe. And i assure you it's nicer than egypt, more natural, cause if you're gonna go to Sharam el Sheikh u'll notice it's foreigns who are all over the place, not genuine anymore, but in Beirut it's a wonderful mix of cultures in the lebanese people who are Arab-French-American-influenced

I don't quite understand why your home provider is a problem though..........after all, you are paying for the service? If, as you say, there is no censorship or politics involved then it must be economic/resource influenced?
Let me tell you exactly what's up with my ISP, the cheap bastards have a connection that if divided should provide 50K for its users but instead they're giving away 128 "unshared" connection, and you do get it. But the trick is, stuff gets blocked, P2P doesn't run and (as i found out by myself recently) they look at what websites are getting most traffic and from whom, so they are invading our privacy in order to minimize traffic : their resources.

But DSL is all legal and (almost) no stuff like that happens, now i'm waiting for my 512K line to get set-up hopefully this week, i've been waiting too long :@ !!