Seems like an odd time to do this, given the strict new law (http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/23/dutch-parliament-passes-s...) on cookies that the Dutch Parliament just passed.
To digress a bit: For the non-EU crowd, the easiest way into the country is probably with a kennismigrant (knowledge worker) visa. This entitles you to a faster, easier process but there's a few problems: You must work for a company with (or willing to apply for) a special license to have a knowledge worker, you must make over a certain salary, and you're not allowed to do any other sort of work while living here (yes, that probably means your side startup).
Supposedly, you can also set up your own business here and work for yourself directly but I've never met anyone who's successfully done it. I expect you'll probably need to hire a decent lawyer to help sort it out.
Immigration aside, the Netherlands is a nice place to work and there's more to Amsterdam itself then pot and prostitutes. Something interesting is always going on and there's plenty of smart folks bouncing around. Personally, I hope this whole Appsterdam concept (mobile-centric name aside) turns into a huge hit.
However, more important than ease of visa processing is that as a Kennismigrant, you can usually get the "30% rule" tax break -- first 30% of your income is tax-free, AND the first euro after the 30% is taxed at the lowest tax bracket (i.e. the other 70% is adjusted down in tax bracket). You don't even need to be non-EU to get the 30% rule -- e.g. if you're a Danish or German or Spaniard, and get recruited to the Netherlands specifically for "knowledge work," you can qualify for this tax break too. It's good for 10 years. If you're married, try to see if your spouse can also get a job with this tax break BEFORE you accept your job offer and move to NL.
Make sure you don't go to university or grad school in NL tho, because you have to have been recruited to NL specifically as a highly skilled worker to qualify for this tax break. If you were already in NL for school, you tend to get disqualified for this 30% rule.
The UK has just recently given all businesses an extra year to get their stuff together. The law, by the way, is only restrictive to analytics cookies, basically, if that analytics service is from a third-party.
You have to get express permission from the user if cookies are being used to monitor their activities in ways that are not essential to the site i.e. you don't need to ask for permission if you're using cookies to implement an online shopping basket, as that's essential fairly essential to all online businesses. A blog monitoring user activity, however, would need to get express user permission.
My understanding is that it requires not only an affirmative acceptance from users of cookies, but requires that the site placing the cookie be able to prove that the user did, in fact, provide said acceptance.