OK, part of me is joyful of the fact that we'll have better DVD recording technology soon.
But what about CSS? Surely, this would be the time for the industry to settle on some other, more cumbersome and perhaps lossy, encryption technology. The DVD player in my living room most likely won't be able to play these DVD discs. So if there is a new standard out there there will be new opportunities for this kind of crap. I am particularly wondering about this:
"In addition, the adoption of a unique ID written on a Blu-ray Disc realizes high quality copyright protection functions."
So now we're not able to play a disc because the original and the copy don't have the same ID written?
The interesting part is that we should align ourselves and pledge support to companies that do the right thing(tm). IBM is one of them. Buy IBM servers and laptops. IBM is a big customer of Microsoft's and can make a big dent in the PR of the Redmond giant. IBM would be a company who can help Wal-Mart.
But then again, who is to say that IBM won't turn into a monopoly just because they play nice now?
I thought ext2 was pretty fast. How you've known this for such a long time is beyond me, but obviously you know something that I don't.
And which one is faster, better and more stable seems to count quite a bit. If the tables were turned and Linux cost lots of money but Windows was free, and stability issues and things were solved, I would probably be a Windows user today. What you complained about, some message popping up and you losing all your text, tends to be a stability issue. No?
Some people may wage this "battle" by breaching the DMCA. As you know, circumventing a restrictive mechanism which aims to prevent serialized copying, is a fellony these days. I am not going to break that law, no matter how dubious it is.
Instead I will not buy music CDs anymore. I can live without music. And if you can too, I would suggest that you'd consider doing the same.
But I think we're missing the big picture. Why are these companies doing this? Is it because it is a fashionable thing which one can make a buck on? Possibly. Could it be that they know that the days of the CD are counted? Perhaps. Are they afraid of the Napster-like services becoming more authoritative than the labels? Damn right they are and they should be.
These companies have been feeding off the public because they are the authoritative source of music albums. What if that authority was to change? They would have nothing. Why should somebody go buy an album for some rediculous amount of money when the same content can be downloaded for very little or nothing?
These companies may be doing this because of the Napsterization of the world. Think about it. Napster was shut down, no biggie. Napster was based in the U.S. Clear juristiction. However what if the infrastructure was put in place and such a service was to move to say......Russia? There is no way Corporate America could get to that unless a) sabotage was an option or b) the U.S. Government was to issue sanctions against such a country.
Either one could be feasible in dire straits, but certainly not considered lightly. Most likely these companies will perish when people have had enough.
Various governments across the world are trying to grasp the Internet for monitoring and tracking purposes. If anything I would say that the government is now the heart of the net. Carnivore and other "freedom endorsing" tools seem to be more widespread by the day if one is to take the trend on Slashdot seriously.
Not only is the government afraid of the anarchy of the Internet, but it is also realizing that it is a great way to keep tabs on what its citizens are doing, since more people spend more and more time online. Wrap it all up in a FUD package about hackers and terrorists and the deal is done.
But I don't think the question should be what the "heart" is today. I think the more interesting question is where it will be tomorrow. Is the monitoring going to become more widespread and controversial and ultimately handed off to private organizations? Perhaps a new government subsidised monopoly may emerge? Who knows?
They won't. The reason they won't is because they don't own the rights to the games which they have ported. It's not their source code to do with as they please.
Microsoft releases source code to select customers which it deems may need it. But just because you have somebody else's source code doesn't mean it's open source.
Does Australia have any laws that prohibit politicians that go about "governing" the public like this? Is there such a thing as a Constitution? Somebody must be able to contest the "governments" actions, such as a Judiciary branch?
Apart from the fact that Australians obviously aren't Free to decide what they would like to view on the Great Network, what measures can a government take?
I mean, if somebody in Australia wanted to, that person could use a proxy somewhere else in the world, where the "forbidden" content is available. Or does the Australian "government" have some really creepy way of filtering stuff out? (Can't think of how that could be possible, without secretly installing rogue software on everybody's computers which would filter content per machine)
Something like that could be attributed to evidence of filtering being a moot point. That the person who would like to view "forbidden" content could do so regardless of the "safeguards" put in by the Australian "government".
The problem with getting back into the Big Iron playfield is that it takes cash. This is something Carly has made sure is scarce at HP. So HP HAS to compete with bargain products to gain cash to play ball again. But the competition is too hard, so HP will fail with its current business model. Sorry to say, but I doubt HP will ever be what it was.
I remember my father's HP LaserJet II. Sturdy as a battle tank. It worked for 10 years and still works. Just is a bit slow compared to other concurrent printers. So he bought a new one. An HP 2000. That was the worst printer I have ever seen. It was fragile plastic and all of that stuff. It worked for a year, then needed a new fuser. I mean, come on... The LJII needed a new toner cartridge now and then, but that was that. This thing was replaced with a new unit that acted just as poorly. Meaning that either my father went through a total of three 2000 printers (he had two replaced) and all of them were defective, or they were just plain poor quality. He then bought a Lexmark Optra T612 and it works as a charm! No problems whatsoever.
I mean what does HP do if it doesn't do PCs, because we all know that Fiorina wants to get rid of HP-UX and all of that GOOD stuff.
Yes, that leaves flimsy INKJET PRINTERS! Cool. And digital cameras. Wait, they suck at those, so just printers.
Carly has successfully driven this company into ruin. As she did with her previous ventures. Why doesn't she just file chapter 11 right now to be done with it.
"I still don't understand why most CD's are more expensive than tapes."
That's very simple. It's called capitalism. People in general know that CD's are cheaper to produce but the price difference is such a well established fact that people don't question it when buying.
So terrible flaws such as the recent Internet Explorer problems wouldn't apply, because the free clause makes it exempt? Sounds like this won't do much good.
If you're afraid that mirrors will copy your files, why don't you just overwrite the file with the same name, just some bogus data. That file will be mirrored again since it has a new date.
Sometimes when a problem gets high tech, it's time for a low-tech approach.
I don't know Norwegian very well at all. Lots of stuff in that article that I couldn't figure out what it meant. I spent lots of time in Sweden and the language is similar to Norwegian.
Here goes my attempt at a translation, might not be very accurate mind you...:
Economic Police has decided to seek indictment against Jon Johansen for breaking the Computer/Data Crime Law. Johansen has been indicted for breaking the copy protection on DVD-discs. The indictment is no surprise, says Jon Bing.
For two years, the Economic Police has investigated the case gainst the young man[?]. Johansen is a member of a computer group which developed the computer program DeCSS. The program can be used to copy the contents of DVD-discs.
American picture associations cite that Johansen has been part of a breach of copyright law. Economic Police has sought indictment against the 18 year old man[?] for breach against the Crime Law's[?] paragraph 145.2. jfr3.ledd. [?]
Circumventing protection
- We have indicted Johansen for having circumvented the copy protection on DVD-discs. He has willfully cracked the protective measures. When you buy a DVD-disc, you buy the right to play it, not copy it, attorney Inger Marie Sunde said.
In January, two years ago, the police took action and searched the room of Johansen. Among other things they seized large portions of his computer equipment and the 18-year old's mobile telephone.
The computer community has displayed creat concern that the, then, 16-year old became the target of the Economic Police. This lead to lots of collections of funds for a possible litigation on behalf of the boy. Attorney Cato Schiotz became involved as Johansens defender, but the case was taken over by Terje Svendsen with Schiotz law firm.
- We would like to have gotten the investigation to end sooner, but it has taken lots of time now. There has been lots of data that needs analyzing and we have used that time with consideration to our resources, says Sunde.
Natural to try the DVD case
- It isn't a surprise that there is an indictment against Johansen under the Crime Law[?] paragraph 145. We thought we had a clear case with that law, but the High Court has created doubts. Thus it isn't strange that Economic Police wants to try the matter. It is not said that they want a conviction of Johansen, says a Law Professor, Jon Bing.
- So Johansen is used as a legal precedent?
- No, not like that. But it is an unclear situation and we want to be sure to get a resolution to it. The DVD case is a good case to try like that. It is not clear if what he has done is against the law, but I think it is proper to indict, says Bing to Nettavisen.
Economic Police has not sought indictment against John Johansen for breaching the Descructive[??] Law and it was expected from several parties, said Bing, unsurprisedly.
- No, I understand that well. If you open the door to a book store, you haven't distributed the books, said the law professor.
In the Law text which laid ground for the idnictment it says "He who knows to break a protective device or by similar means knowingly obtains access to data or program equipment, stored or electronically transferred, or by other technical means. Causes damage by authoring[?] or use of similar knowledge, or breach by personal gains, can be imprisoned for up to 2 years. Accomplices are punished by similar means."
Long wait
Svendsen has previously said that the investigation has been a burden for the young man who was barely 16 years old when he became the suspect for the Economic Police.
District Attorney Inger marie Sunde has for the past two years spoken to the press that the matter will soon reach conclusion. But no sooner than Thursday, Jan 10, almost two years to the day after Johansen was arrested, the Economic Police made public that they will seek indictment against him.
The Criminal Law that Johansen is indicted under, has previously been tried twice in the Norwegian Justice System. That time it was about descrambling TV-channels from cable TV. The High Court concluded that time that the law could not be used to punish unlawful access to TV and radio signals.
Economic Police says that because of the fact that one can't tell different types of data apart and this is because the law can be used to convict Johansen.
- Data is data, Sunde said.
The District Attorney says to Nettavisen that the indictment now is ready to be submitted to the court. That means the case against Jon Johansen probably will be tried during this year.
I remember having to use cotton swabs and alcohol to clean the heads of those things every few days. Other than that, they were pretty sturdy. I can't think of one 8mm drive that has lasted as long as one of our recently retired 9-track machines did.
I would imagine that other companies do similar things. What's different about Microsoft doing it? After all, people are "consumers" and not people in the marketplace. Since the marketplace operates to a large degree on statistics, why not try to "manage" those statistics by inciting consumers to affect the statistics?
Now the question of if it is morally correct, is a totally different thing. We all know that Big Business(tm) doesn't have morals and Microsoft(R) is Big Business(tm).
I remember something similar with the Solaris source code. After they saw what people thought about that, they committed to keep the sources open to the public. The same may happen from this.
But then again, Sun and HP compilers are pretty nasty too. Yes, gcc is available for these platforms, but it doesn't produce anywhere near as good binaries as for Intel machines.
While this doesn't have much to do with the compiler itself, it's still one of those annoying gotchas. Solaris expects you to use -L for compile time linking, but wants you to specify -R for runtime paths. If one doesn't specify -R on a normal platform, the OS usually is smart enough to figure out that the compile time path should be the runtime path. Not Solaris. It will freak out and say that it can't find the library that you linked with. Subsequently it is a bunch of Makefiles needing editing and/or environment variables needing to be set. Then compile again.
I suppose Sun did this so that one can target platforms easier and cross compile. The availability of such options is great, but enforcing them is something that is annoying. And don't let me get started on the ISO craziness in later versions of Solaris. Digging through header files while trying to port code.. Arrgh.
This type of stuff makes me think that MS could have embraced the world much better. It's rather interesting that they didn't.
This IDE vs. SCSI debate is getting really old. Buy what you believe in and what you want to spend. I for one prefer SCSI and I am willing to pay the extra cash. If you don't, then don't.
Probably even more serious is that your boss is more loyal to his boss than to you. Your boss doesn't want to get fired just because you're about to get canned. Your boss has the EXACT same problems in life as you do. He has expenses and he has aspirations. He wants to take care of them as good as possible. But if it comes down to it, he will not walk the hall of shame with you. He will have you on your way and give you some bullshit about it being the best for the company and so forth.
Make no mistake about it. Anything, ANYTHING that you tell your boss will most likely reach the Director. That's how it works. It doesn't matter how chatty or nice your boss is.
He is either a) incapable of supporting you, in which case he is incompetent as a boss, or b) he doesn't trust you enough to put himself on the line for you. In either case, he isn't your friend here. You are your only friend. As a wise man once told me: "You are the only one to watch your six, nobody else will do it for you."
I agree, get a letter of recommendation and make sure your desk is clean as well as your act. Then look around. Make people love you before you leave. Counter offers? Ignore them. Counter offers are terribly bad. Why? Simple. You've already shown that you aren't loyal, so the first chance of letting you go will be taken. But if you need to in the future, people can call this employer and get good recommendations.
Anybody remember the Excalibur BBS system? The sysops were promised a 32-bit version from Excalibur Communications but never got one. I don't remember what the last release was though. Anyway, for those that don't remember Excalibur, it ran on Windows. It was a gui BBS system with a gui client. You never really typed anything to navigate in menus. Some sysops made a whole page a big gif picture. Took forever to load the damn thing. Anyway, Excalibur Communications went out of business and I've been trying to find someplace that still has the server. For nothing else than nostalgia.
Excalibur died because of the web. The web was cheaper, faster and pretty much always better. And of course, the content wasn't tied to the sysop of a system. So in that respect one can say it was a failure. But other than that, it was pretty cool.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, part of me is joyful of the fact that we'll have better DVD recording technology soon.
But what about CSS? Surely, this would be the time for the industry to settle on some other, more cumbersome and perhaps lossy, encryption technology. The DVD player in my living room most likely won't be able to play these DVD discs. So if there is a new standard out there there will be new opportunities for this kind of crap. I am particularly wondering about this:
"In addition, the adoption of a unique ID written on a Blu-ray Disc realizes high quality copyright protection functions."
So now we're not able to play a disc because the original and the copy don't have the same ID written?
The interesting part is that we should align ourselves and pledge support to companies that do the right thing(tm). IBM is one of them. Buy IBM servers and laptops. IBM is a big customer of Microsoft's and can make a big dent in the PR of the Redmond giant. IBM would be a company who can help Wal-Mart.
But then again, who is to say that IBM won't turn into a monopoly just because they play nice now?
Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I thought ext2 was pretty fast. How you've known this for such a long time is beyond me, but obviously you know something that I don't.
And which one is faster, better and more stable seems to count quite a bit. If the tables were turned and Linux cost lots of money but Windows was free, and stability issues and things were solved, I would probably be a Windows user today. What you complained about, some message popping up and you losing all your text, tends to be a stability issue. No?
Some people may wage this "battle" by breaching the DMCA. As you know, circumventing a restrictive mechanism which aims to prevent serialized copying, is a fellony these days. I am not going to break that law, no matter how dubious it is.
...Russia? There is no way Corporate America could get to that unless a) sabotage was an option or b) the U.S. Government was to issue sanctions against such a country.
Instead I will not buy music CDs anymore. I can live without music. And if you can too, I would suggest that you'd consider doing the same.
But I think we're missing the big picture. Why are these companies doing this? Is it because it is a fashionable thing which one can make a buck on? Possibly. Could it be that they know that the days of the CD are counted? Perhaps. Are they afraid of the Napster-like services becoming more authoritative than the labels? Damn right they are and they should be.
These companies have been feeding off the public because they are the authoritative source of music albums. What if that authority was to change? They would have nothing. Why should somebody go buy an album for some rediculous amount of money when the same content can be downloaded for very little or nothing?
These companies may be doing this because of the Napsterization of the world. Think about it. Napster was shut down, no biggie. Napster was based in the U.S. Clear juristiction. However what if the infrastructure was put in place and such a service was to move to say...
Either one could be feasible in dire straits, but certainly not considered lightly. Most likely these companies will perish when people have had enough.
Various governments across the world are trying to grasp the Internet for monitoring and tracking purposes. If anything I would say that the government is now the heart of the net. Carnivore and other "freedom endorsing" tools seem to be more widespread by the day if one is to take the trend on Slashdot seriously.
Not only is the government afraid of the anarchy of the Internet, but it is also realizing that it is a great way to keep tabs on what its citizens are doing, since more people spend more and more time online. Wrap it all up in a FUD package about hackers and terrorists and the deal is done.
But I don't think the question should be what the "heart" is today. I think the more interesting question is where it will be tomorrow. Is the monitoring going to become more widespread and controversial and ultimately handed off to private organizations? Perhaps a new government subsidised monopoly may emerge? Who knows?
SCO charged $100 for this shit. And they had some bullshit license and all of that.
Now if Caldera open sources UnixWare, I'd be more surprised. That could be really useful. Although I'm not holding my breath.
Anyway, it's cool of Caldera to do this, albeit I doubt it will mean much in the long run...
They won't. The reason they won't is because they don't own the rights to the games which they have ported. It's not their source code to do with as they please.
Microsoft releases source code to select customers which it deems may need it. But just because you have somebody else's source code doesn't mean it's open source.
Sorry.
Does Australia have any laws that prohibit politicians that go about "governing" the public like this? Is there such a thing as a Constitution? Somebody must be able to contest the "governments" actions, such as a Judiciary branch?
Apart from the fact that Australians obviously aren't Free to decide what they would like to view on the Great Network, what measures can a government take?
I mean, if somebody in Australia wanted to, that person could use a proxy somewhere else in the world, where the "forbidden" content is available. Or does the Australian "government" have some really creepy way of filtering stuff out? (Can't think of how that could be possible, without secretly installing rogue software on everybody's computers which would filter content per machine)
Something like that could be attributed to evidence of filtering being a moot point. That the person who would like to view "forbidden" content could do so regardless of the "safeguards" put in by the Australian "government".
The problem with getting back into the Big Iron playfield is that it takes cash. This is something Carly has made sure is scarce at HP. So HP HAS to compete with bargain products to gain cash to play ball again. But the competition is too hard, so HP will fail with its current business model. Sorry to say, but I doubt HP will ever be what it was.
I remember my father's HP LaserJet II. Sturdy as a battle tank. It worked for 10 years and still works. Just is a bit slow compared to other concurrent printers. So he bought a new one. An HP 2000. That was the worst printer I have ever seen. It was fragile plastic and all of that stuff. It worked for a year, then needed a new fuser. I mean, come on... The LJII needed a new toner cartridge now and then, but that was that. This thing was replaced with a new unit that acted just as poorly. Meaning that either my father went through a total of three 2000 printers (he had two replaced) and all of them were defective, or they were just plain poor quality. He then bought a Lexmark Optra T612 and it works as a charm! No problems whatsoever.
...HP go out of business now.
I mean what does HP do if it doesn't do PCs, because we all know that Fiorina wants to get rid of HP-UX and all of that GOOD stuff.
Yes, that leaves flimsy INKJET PRINTERS! Cool. And digital cameras. Wait, they suck at those, so just printers.
Carly has successfully driven this company into ruin. As she did with her previous ventures. Why doesn't she just file chapter 11 right now to be done with it.
Face it, Carly has driven this company into ruin.
"HP Invent"
"I still don't understand why most CD's are more expensive than tapes."
That's very simple. It's called capitalism. People in general know that CD's are cheaper to produce but the price difference is such a well established fact that people don't question it when buying.
So terrible flaws such as the recent Internet Explorer problems wouldn't apply, because the free clause makes it exempt? Sounds like this won't do much good.
If you're afraid that mirrors will copy your files, why don't you just overwrite the file with the same name, just some bogus data. That file will be mirrored again since it has a new date.
Sometimes when a problem gets high tech, it's time for a low-tech approach.
I don't know Norwegian very well at all. Lots of stuff in that article that I couldn't figure out what it meant. I spent lots of time in Sweden and the language is similar to Norwegian.
Here goes my attempt at a translation, might not be very accurate mind you...:
Economic Police has decided to seek indictment against Jon Johansen for breaking the Computer/Data Crime Law. Johansen has been indicted for breaking the copy protection on DVD-discs. The indictment is no surprise, says Jon Bing.
For two years, the Economic Police has investigated the case gainst the young man[?]. Johansen is a member of a computer group which developed the computer program DeCSS. The program can be used to copy the contents of DVD-discs.
American picture associations cite that Johansen has been part of a breach of copyright law. Economic Police has sought indictment against the 18 year old man[?] for breach against the Crime Law's[?] paragraph 145.2. jfr3.ledd. [?]
Circumventing protection
- We have indicted Johansen for having circumvented the copy protection on DVD-discs. He has willfully cracked the protective measures. When you buy a DVD-disc, you buy the right to play it, not copy it, attorney Inger Marie Sunde said.
In January, two years ago, the police took action and searched the room of Johansen. Among other things they seized large portions of his computer equipment and the 18-year old's mobile telephone.
The computer community has displayed creat concern that the, then, 16-year old became the target of the Economic Police. This lead to lots of collections of funds for a possible litigation on behalf of the boy. Attorney Cato Schiotz became involved as Johansens defender, but the case was taken over by Terje Svendsen with Schiotz law firm.
- We would like to have gotten the investigation to end sooner, but it has taken lots of time now. There has been lots of data that needs analyzing and we have used that time with consideration to our resources, says Sunde.
Natural to try the DVD case
- It isn't a surprise that there is an indictment against Johansen under the Crime Law[?] paragraph 145. We thought we had a clear case with that law, but the High Court has created doubts. Thus it isn't strange that Economic Police wants to try the matter. It is not said that they want a conviction of Johansen, says a Law Professor, Jon Bing.
- So Johansen is used as a legal precedent?
- No, not like that. But it is an unclear situation and we want to be sure to get a resolution to it. The DVD case is a good case to try like that. It is not clear if what he has done is against the law, but I think it is proper to indict, says Bing to Nettavisen.
Economic Police has not sought indictment against John Johansen for breaching the Descructive[??] Law and it was expected from several parties, said Bing, unsurprisedly.
- No, I understand that well. If you open the door to a book store, you haven't distributed the books, said the law professor.
In the Law text which laid ground for the idnictment it says "He who knows to break a protective device or by similar means knowingly obtains access to data or program equipment, stored or electronically transferred, or by other technical means. Causes damage by authoring[?] or use of similar knowledge, or breach by personal gains, can be imprisoned for up to 2 years. Accomplices are punished by similar means."
Long wait
Svendsen has previously said that the investigation has been a burden for the young man who was barely 16 years old when he became the suspect for the Economic Police.
District Attorney Inger marie Sunde has for the past two years spoken to the press that the matter will soon reach conclusion. But no sooner than Thursday, Jan 10, almost two years to the day after Johansen was arrested, the Economic Police made public that they will seek indictment against him.
The Criminal Law that Johansen is indicted under, has previously been tried twice in the Norwegian Justice System. That time it was about descrambling TV-channels from cable TV. The High Court concluded that time that the law could not be used to punish unlawful access to TV and radio signals.
Economic Police says that because of the fact that one can't tell different types of data apart and this is because the law can be used to convict Johansen.
- Data is data, Sunde said.
The District Attorney says to Nettavisen that the indictment now is ready to be submitted to the court. That means the case against Jon Johansen probably will be tried during this year.
I remember having to use cotton swabs and alcohol to clean the heads of those things every few days. Other than that, they were pretty sturdy. I can't think of one 8mm drive that has lasted as long as one of our recently retired 9-track machines did.
They don't make 'em as they used to anymore, son.
"Other companies may be smart enough not to get caught!"
This is probably true and I share your sentiment.
I would imagine that other companies do similar things. What's different about Microsoft doing it? After all, people are "consumers" and not people in the marketplace. Since the marketplace operates to a large degree on statistics, why not try to "manage" those statistics by inciting consumers to affect the statistics?
Now the question of if it is morally correct, is a totally different thing. We all know that Big Business(tm) doesn't have morals and Microsoft(R) is Big Business(tm).
I remember something similar with the Solaris source code. After they saw what people thought about that, they committed to keep the sources open to the public. The same may happen from this.
But then again, Sun and HP compilers are pretty nasty too. Yes, gcc is available for these platforms, but it doesn't produce anywhere near as good binaries as for Intel machines.
While this doesn't have much to do with the compiler itself, it's still one of those annoying gotchas. Solaris expects you to use -L for compile time linking, but wants you to specify -R for runtime paths. If one doesn't specify -R on a normal platform, the OS usually is smart enough to figure out that the compile time path should be the runtime path. Not Solaris. It will freak out and say that it can't find the library that you linked with. Subsequently it is a bunch of Makefiles needing editing and/or environment variables needing to be set. Then compile again.
I suppose Sun did this so that one can target platforms easier and cross compile. The availability of such options is great, but enforcing them is something that is annoying. And don't let me get started on the ISO craziness in later versions of Solaris. Digging through header files while trying to port code.. Arrgh.
This type of stuff makes me think that MS could have embraced the world much better. It's rather interesting that they didn't.
This IDE vs. SCSI debate is getting really old. Buy what you believe in and what you want to spend. I for one prefer SCSI and I am willing to pay the extra cash. If you don't, then don't.
It's a Free country, brother...
Probably even more serious is that your boss is more loyal to his boss than to you. Your boss doesn't want to get fired just because you're about to get canned. Your boss has the EXACT same problems in life as you do. He has expenses and he has aspirations. He wants to take care of them as good as possible. But if it comes down to it, he will not walk the hall of shame with you. He will have you on your way and give you some bullshit about it being the best for the company and so forth.
Make no mistake about it. Anything, ANYTHING that you tell your boss will most likely reach the Director. That's how it works. It doesn't matter how chatty or nice your boss is.
He is either a) incapable of supporting you, in which case he is incompetent as a boss, or b) he doesn't trust you enough to put himself on the line for you. In either case, he isn't your friend here. You are your only friend. As a wise man once told me: "You are the only one to watch your six, nobody else will do it for you."
I agree, get a letter of recommendation and make sure your desk is clean as well as your act. Then look around. Make people love you before you leave. Counter offers? Ignore them. Counter offers are terribly bad. Why? Simple. You've already shown that you aren't loyal, so the first chance of letting you go will be taken. But if you need to in the future, people can call this employer and get good recommendations.
I know there was one called Compuserve. =)
Anybody remember the Excalibur BBS system? The sysops were promised a 32-bit version from Excalibur Communications but never got one. I don't remember what the last release was though. Anyway, for those that don't remember Excalibur, it ran on Windows. It was a gui BBS system with a gui client. You never really typed anything to navigate in menus. Some sysops made a whole page a big gif picture. Took forever to load the damn thing. Anyway, Excalibur Communications went out of business and I've been trying to find someplace that still has the server. For nothing else than nostalgia.
Excalibur died because of the web. The web was cheaper, faster and pretty much always better. And of course, the content wasn't tied to the sysop of a system. So in that respect one can say it was a failure. But other than that, it was pretty cool.