Today’s Jon Carroll column is concerned with an issue that’s near and dear to rc3.org–the pathetic state of the health care system in the United States these days.

In amongst some stuff that’s not particularly interesting to me, Dave Winer takes on the people who would leverage patents against the Internet community in his DaveNet essay today. Fortunately, the Internet community does have a weapon that can be used against patent holders … prior art.

Buying advertising time during the Super Bowl is the antithesis of guerilla marketing. Even so, bunches of cash strapped dot coms are spending millions to get on TV during the big game. Compared to spending 3.2 million of your 6 million VC dollars to get 90 seconds of airtime during the Super Bowl, paying a small town in Oregon to change its name looks like a downright brilliant idea.

Some idiots at a .com startup have bribed the citizens of Halfway, Oregon (population 345) to change their town’s name to Half.com for a year. Sometimes I think there’s just too much guerilla marketing news for one man to take.

There are probably times when I should have bought an ad like this. Unfortunately, the guy who bought the ad, which offered an apology for his drunken behavior on New Years Eve, was fired after his bosses saw it.

The Web at war? The Chechens who are resisting the Russian assault on Grozny are getting information out through the Web site www.kavkaz.org. Everything I know about Chechnya, I learned from Fielding’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places.

Kevin Mitnick is being released today, but he’ll hardly be free. He won’t be allowed to use a computer, or even work somewhere where they have computers, for three years. That should make it easy for him to support himself.

Salon has an article about the sale of illegal merchandise, particularly products made from endangered animals, on eBay. They refer to some of eBay’s tactics to eliminate illegal auctions as Orwellian, which I think is pretty harsh.

Slate has a pretty funny article offering the cynic’s eye view of Bill Gates’ stepping down as Micrsoft CEO. Willial Saletan pretty accurately captures the various schools of thought on why Gates’ is stepping down.

Apparently the burgeoning scandal over anti-drug themes in network TV shows being substituted for public service announcements has grown to involve newspapers as well. Howard Kurtz reports in today’s Washington Post that several major newspapers (including the New York Times, which blasted the TV networks in an editorial this week), also cut deals with the drug office to obtain credits for public service announcements in other ways.