The Vancouver Sun: Canadians are people, too, especially those from Quebec, and they're not going to take it anymore. "It" being the use of area-specific monikers (aka intellectual property) for tasty French-Canadian foodstuffs by businesses that aren't keeping true to the spirit of the items' origins. Take, for example, the humble Montreal bagel:

During a recent morning at St. Viateur Bagel, co-owner Robert Morena praised the idea of quality standards while indignantly recounting the activities of a would-be competitor from Hamilton, Ont., in early 2008.

"Someone in Ontario was claiming to make Montreal bagels, and this person obviously did not know how to make Montreal bagels. It was a bagel with powdered sugar on it, and they were claiming it was a Montreal bagel!"

Morena adds that he would support the creation of a system to promote and protect the authenticity of the city’s famous food product. He is adamant that it is the one-of-a-kind quality of Montreal bagels that has led St. Viateur to acquire regular customers across Canada and throughout the U.S. Northeast.

The French, Italians and Spanish already have protections in place for their regional food specialties, so why not Canada, too? Read more on recapturing a bit of Canadian pride in Culinary intellectual property and the Montreal bagel by Jeff Roberts.

PEHub.com: There's an unexpected correlation between venture capitalists and investments in geographically-close businesses that is generating a bit of a kerfuffle. The good folks at the Harvard Business School have discovered a relationship between VCs and local startup funding that turns out to be somewhat contrary to common beliefs. Dan Primack reports on the HBS study: "Specifically, the paper found that VC firms based in San Francisco, Boston and New York generally return more money on investments outside of their local geographies than on investments close to home. This isn’t to say that such firms do badly on their local deals – a Palo Alto-based firm still does better on a typical Menlo Park deal than would a Cleveland-based firm – nor does it take into account organizational costs (travel, etc.). But, again, that Palo Alto-based firm will probably generate a higher return on a Cleveland-based portfolio company than on one based in Menlo Park." Whoa there, Nelly! So, in the case of funding new entrepreneurial ventures, being a "locavore" is not all it's cracked up to be. Read Primack's piece, Study Disputes The Value of VCs "Buying Local", for more details and be sure to hit up the link at the end of the page for a look at the entire "world gone upside-down" HBS report.

InformationWeek.com: Now that off-shoring US tech jobs to India is par-for-the-course behavior, should American students be concerned that their Computer Science degrees will get them nothing more than a paper hat and plastic nametag at BurgerWorld? Well, yes, actually, if one very successful Indian CEO is to be believed. Rob Preston, VP & Editor in Chief at Informationweek, expands the picture a bit in his topical piece, Top Indian CEO: Most American Grads Are 'Unemployable', and reveals Vineet Nayar's tough love answer to a query by an educational representative of a large US state: "The official wanted to know why HCL, a $2.5 billion (revenue) company with more than 3,000 people across 21 offices in 15 states, wasn't hiring more people in his state. Vineet's short answer: because most American college grads are 'unemployable.'" Wha..?! That's a sucker punch to the satchel and a wake-up call to American educational institutions. When Indian tech giants refuse to hire US students because they "are just too expensive to train," it's time to revisit CS curricula and program goals, don't 'cha think? Reminds me of that old joke: "What does a Computer Science degree and $.75 get you? A cup of cheap coffee."

The New York Times: You've surely heard of Google's high-minded motto: "Do no evil," but can such a statement co-exist with the companies stated mission of seeking "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Maybe, or maybe not, depending on who you're talking to about the subject. From Mountain View, California, David Carr recently took a private tour of the Googleplex and met with the founders of the multi-billion dollar IP-heavy company. Here's the closing bit of Carr's How Good (or Not Evil) Is Google?, which should give some indication of his impressions of Google's prominence in all things information: "When I told Mr. Schmidt I was worried about Google’s dominant presence in my digital life, he said: "It’s a legitimate concern. But the question is, how are we doing? Are our products working for you?" Why, yes they are. And if a book is ever written about all this, Google will probably be able to serve that up as well."

ArsTechnica.com: The RIAA vs. P2P filesharers Question of the Day is: What's next for Jammie Thomas-Rasset? And, it's not a query to be taken lightly, my friends. Nate Anderson continues his in-depth coverage of an increasingly interesting case with this snippet on the grossly unconstitutional ~$2 million dollar fine levied against Thomas-Rasset: "The sheer, outrageous size of the damage award in the case is already prompting calls to change the law. Even among the Ars commentariat, plenty of readers believe that Thomas-Rasset did infringe the 24 copyrights at issue, but there was near universal disdain for the jury and for the law that allowed such an award. But the outrage isn't confined to the blogosphere. The Washington lobby group CCIA, backed by AMD, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and others, calls the verdict 'ridiculous.'" Man, you *know* it's a kooky-sized fine when the tech industry biggies get on-board the "WTF?-train"! I bet Thomas-Rasset wishes she had settled for $5K now but maybe that's the point: fight all the way to the end and stand up for your principles in the face of daunting odds. Isn't that the same guiding values that led to the foundation of this great nation? Go, Jammie, go!

Bonus piece o' the day: PEHub.com's Dan Primack presents Private Equity and Venture Capital To Be Regulated.