Young ladies with red lips and strong thighs and riding crops seek Reynard’s bloody brush. More Pimms?The younger folk gather at Badminton, where their parents are the judges But it isn’t just the horses that are on trial. There is no terrible self-consciousness here, merely a quiet satisfaction with rank attained and life still being lived. That explains the Kennel Club tie, the elaborate crest, the violently green hat and the large cigar. We are to be discovered on the lawns at Glyndebourne, pulling china out of Wind-in-the-Willows hampers like Ratty and Mole, worrying about grass-stains and waiting to be summoned to Simone Boccanegra.Our more showy country cousins, the sporty ones, strut their stuff at the great calendar events. In blazers (Blazers? Have you worn a blazer since school? Can you pass that shop called Blazer without shuddering?) at Henley for the regatta, recalling strokes pulled on water .. and on land. How can that be?”It’s designed through seeing a lot of other car crashes Crash-test dummy,” he chuckles to himself.

“I had my four-year-old boy in the office one day, and Jim came out and wanted to meet him, and talked to him, even gave him a model of a FedEx airplane to keep. When he left to go to McCaw Cellular, the lobby was filled with tearful well-wishers from all levels of the company, such was his personal charm and understanding of good corporate culture.Even after he had gone, his legacy was frequently discussed on FXTV. He had magnetism about him; he would always listen to you, whatever level of the company you were in.”But Southern charm and being a nice guy are not much use when you are up against the likes of Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy and Bill Gates. Andreessen now heads up the new products division, passing on his ideas to technicians to see whether they’ll fly. It consists of Barksdale and the company’s two founders, Jim Clark (a venture capital guy who keeps a low profile these days) and Marc Andreessen, the wunderkind who found himself a multi-millionaire at age 23. Tom Martin, now vice-president of corporate relations at ITT Manufacturing, remembers him fondly.

Barksdale’s job is to blend this vision with his own ideas about where the company should be going.At FedEx, Barksdale implemented the famous computerised tracking system that allowed FedEx to make up so much ground on its rival, United Parcel Service He also implemented FXTV, an internal TV system. Of Netscape’s plan to give away the browser free, he says, “One of the revenue legs of the stool just got cut off. James is enormously respected, and he’s known as a charismatic leader, but right now the jury’s out on who is in charge of overall strategy there – Barksdale or the board.”The so-called Bark-Clark-Marc trio is Netscape’s backbone. Spying rocky seas ahead, Netscape had already changed direction at the end of 1996 and headed for the intranet arena – selling the software used to make mini World Wide Webs on corporate networks, which give employees instant access to company information and allow them to send e-mail and share applications. However, while “groupware” products such as Suite Spot and Communicator are a logical extension of the browser, Netscape has found itself even deeper in the territory of its formidable competitors – IBM (which owns Lotus Notes) and Microsoft (Back Office).”It’s as though Netscape climbed into the ring to fight Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield at once,” says Charles Finnie, managing director of analysts Volpe Brown Whelan, who has long led the cry that Netscape’s stock is overvalued. After all, he cashed out $100m worth of his original 7.6 per cent holding in 1996, and now takes a token $1 salary.But whereas once Barksdale may have been in it for the adrenaline rush (having been headhunted at 51, just as he prepared for early retirement and the golf course) now he must be wondering how to save face.Over the past year, Netscape has seen its original lead in the browser market cut by a third by Microsoft, which gradually perfected its Internet Explorer and made it ubiquitous, and free.

In January 1995 Barksdale was brought in with great fanfare to head up the cocky young company in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. That autumn he oversaw the most successful stock flotation in history. After its recent troubles, everyone agrees that Netscape Communications Corporation needs a firm pair of hands on the corporate wheel.Those hands should belong to Jim Barksdale, the highly rated chief executive who made his name at the parcel delivery specialist Federal Express in the Eighties. But on 5 January Netscape shares fell 21 per cent in one day, to close at their lowest-ever price, $18.55. Last Friday, despite the announcement that the browser would henceforth be free, and the code was being licensed to programmers, they were still struggling at $18.12.The reason behind the latest slide – a projected loss that will be confirmed later today when the company releases results for the last quarter of 1997 – would have caused Barksdale far more pain than the $23m he lost on paper on 5 January. NSCP became a symbol of Nineties tech stock mania, quickly tripling to a high of $82.50. Joseph Gallivan profiles Jim Barksdale, the chief executive charged with navigating the company through troubled waters.
The logo of the Netscape Navigator Web browser is a ship’s steering- wheel.

Events somewhere could also mean that we all retire early, and in style. I don’t know why, but something tells me I’d better not count on that particular scenario.After all, Pogo also said: “We are overwhelmed by insurmountable opportunity.”cg gulker . But now, in the face of heavy losses, rapidly declining market share and staff cutbacks, Netscape Communications Corp has been forced to make the ultimate sacrifice – giving away its browser and the source code that makes it run. Its name is synonymous with the Internet. I want my rubber ducky to rise with the global bathwater, as it were.And there’s a problem here, as I learned from an article by Sarah Boxer on the New York Times Web site.