ValleyWag.com: What's causing venture capitalism to appear less and less attractive to investors?  Owen Thomas thinks he might know the answer: "The problem has been an excess of optimism. To a bullish venture capitalist, every investment looks like it might be the next Google; to a pension fund manager, every VC firm might be the next Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia Capital. That optimism has been turned from liquid cash into illiquid hope, to the tune of billions of dollars." Adeo Ressi, he of the controversial VC-rating website, TheFunded.com, agrees with this sentiment and suggests that "[v]enture capitalists are clubby, insular, and unimaginative, passing up 9 out of 10 deserving companies. And as a result, hundreds of their funds return no money to investors[.]" Not such a good deal, after all! Check out Why venture capital won't save your job for other insider musings on the decline of venture capital.

Entrepreneur.com: That old Dale Carnegie chestnut about a person's favorite word still rings true these days and there are always opportunities to network with your fellow Earthlings and put some of the tenets of "How To Make Friends..." to use for great benefit. Jessica Chen offers some suggestions on how and where to approach potential business contacts with a special focus on the other party's interests. Chen writes, "[N]o matter what the occasion--whether you're at the yoga studio, your child's soccer game or at a religious event--networking is possible." With a step-by-step guide to help lead the way, Alternative Places to Network should help maximize your daily "down-time" by teaching the methods to make the most of every social situation.

VentureBeat.com: Dean Takahashi has some sad news regarding the deaths of some Silicon Valley workers after a fired colleague came back to extract a pound of flesh, or two, from his ex-officemates, Dirty Harry-style. "A layoff at a tech firm apparently drove one employee over the edge on Friday. Police say a laid-off tech employee killed three people at a Santa Clara, Calif. chip company, the San Jose Mercury News reported." The killer, 47 year-old Jing Hua Wu, is now in custody and will, with luck, reap the full force of the law in his prosecution. What a terrible event and one that's sure to send ripples thought the tightly-knit tech community. Read Layoff prompts killings at Silicon Valley tech firmfor Tahakashi's piece, which includes a news release by SiPort, the company where the shooting took place.

O'Reilly Radar: Tim O'Reilly presents A Critical Choice Regarding Innovation in response to the growing difficulty of "working on what counts." O'Reilly writes on the dichotomy of this mission, "[J]ust give people want they want, leading us deeper into a consumer culture whose very financial fabric is wearing thin, or seek out big, hard problems that other people take for granted as unsolvable, and remake the world." That O'ORielly is a proponent of remaking the world should come as no surprise, but that he is an advocate of NOT listening to customers is an interesting turn. By way of example, he notes a few famous businessmen who flew in the face of common wisdom: "The Wright brothers would never have gotten to the airplane by listening to customers; Henry Ford would never have sought to put an automobile in every household; Tim Berners-Lee would never have gotten to the World Wide Web; Jimmy Wales wouldn't have started Wikipedia; and Jack Dorsey wouldn't have started twitter[.]"

InformationWeek.com: IBM's Papermaster is countersuing IBM, it would seem. From Paul McDougall's coverage of this interesting case: "Papermaster is asking the court to declare his noncompete deal with IBM invalid and to release him to work for Apple. Also Thursday, the court ordered IBM to post a $3 million bond to cover any costs or lost wages incurred by Papermaster if IBM does not prevail in the lawsuit, which is ongoing." Papermaster claims his work at Apple in no way violates the spirit of the non-compete contract he signed with IBM as Apple is in the consumer products biz, whereas IBM is in the enterprise business services one. More of this developing story in Revenge Of The Papermaster: Apple Exec Countersues IBM.