Finance-Software

I found the book to be a reasonably enjoyable read, however I must say that the author's high opinion of himself seems to shine through on almost every page and really put me off. We don't want to know about his boats, wealth, etc... just the story would do.

I read a different version, and the cover had just him on the front with a really self satisfying grin. And there were NO photos in the book to relate the story to!

Could have been much better.

This book is so closely aligned with Jim Clark's view of the world that the real drama of software development is lost. Clark claims he's not a whiner, but he spends page after page downing SGI and Microsoft. I would rather that he had spent time focusing on the lives of his programmers, in the way that a far better book, Show-Stopper!, by G. Pascal Zachary, did. In Show-Stopper!, real tension and non-stop action builds as Windows NT is built. That book has little to do with Bill Gates, but instead hones in on the intimate life details of David Cutler and his NT crew. In contrast, Netscape Time has ever redundant and tiresome themes, which if eliminated, would have halved the size of the book. Clark takes credit for founding the company but then, humbly at least, admits that Marc Andreesen and his NCSA crew are the real genius behind Netscape. Maybe someone will write that story in more detail sometime.

The title neglected to tack onto the end "and lost".

An otherwise good book is, to me, lowered by the constant complaining about Microsoft's tactics. I'm not defending those tactics, or saying that the tactics were legal, nice or anything like that, but it just got a bit monotonous listening to them. Of course, it's understandable how Clark could be angry about what happened, but it still makes the book less pleasant to read, trying to find 10 pages without a shot at Microsoft.

Clark is a good writer. The story of how Netscape started is an interesting one. It's one that I've read in one form or another a few times, so that part of the book wasn't that exciting.

There were two parts of the book I found interesting and make the book well worth reading:

1 - Jim Barksdale - the right stuff (chapter 12). Jim Clark is a man who knows what kind of a leader he is, and knows what kind of leader is needed when. Picking Jim Barksdale to be CEO of Netscape was a smart thing, and took a lot of guts. I'd recommend a close reading of this chapter for anyone who thinks they might want to be a leader someday.

2 - The best of enemies (chapter 18). It starts off with the Greeks who beat the Italians in World War 2, and in the process, attracted the attention of the Germans, who flattened them. There is an obvoius lesson there (eventually you lose - Rome was sacked), and Clark adds the non-obvious one: Eventually you will fight a battle you lose. But can you afford to avoid that battle?

So, the book has useful thoughts on leadership and business, interesting insights into the world of funding and Venture Capital and the birth of the Internet as most of us know it.

Read it.

Some valueable resource on Internet offered. New angels to value Internet. But the statement on generic principal on stock/fund/bond market is too simple.

This book/CD combo knows no bounds when it comes to utilizing the Internet for investing. Its scope covers just about every facet of personal finance imaginable. After an intro, chapters 2 through 7 are deovted to a range of investment topics -- stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and riskier instruments such as IPOs, futures and derivatives. Four additional chapters cover insurance (from life to disability, property and liability). Three chapters are devoted to debt (including personal debt, mortgage debt and credit card debt). And other chapters discuss education and car financing, home buying, retirement and estate planning, banking, and taxes. Each chapter begins with an in-depth explanation of the topic at hand and conlcudes with a detailed cyber-tour of related Web and Internet resources. The accompanying CD is packed with useful financial software along with a fully-searchable electronic edition of the entire book. This is the very best book/CD on the market addressing personal financing and investment strategies which leverage the Internet. --- Calvin Groves

Sorry, but this is more an SAP advertisement for why you should consider mySAP.com, than a reference on what it is. In fairness, the various industry solutions are reasonably well explained, and so is how mySAP.com addresses those industries. But it's really about the level of depth and detail, which is not much in this case. For example, at the end of each chapter, a case study is provided. These, however, are generally a bit vague and "marketing-sounding", while the name of the company or client is often omitted, affecting credibility.

Granted, the whole subject is extensive, however, I was expecting more. It doesn't help that this is a translation from German, which tends to make the reading a bit "stiff" and academic compared to what we are accustomed to in North America.

You need not be a SAP R/3 consultant to benefit from this interesting book. In fact, I am not an R/3 expert and have little direct experience with the product. My motivation for reading this book is to better understand ERP in general as it applies to various industry segments, and SAP R/3 and PeopleSoft in particular because of a consulting assignment.

Before reading this book I was under the mistaken impression that SAP R/3 was inflexible and required any company implementing it to completely redesign their business processes to accommodate the software. In many respects this is true. However, SAP has a tagline that "All Industries Are Not Created Equal", which means that a generic solution enforced by an application is not a real solution at all. Using this book I discovered two things: (1) SAP R/3 is a lot more flexible than I heard and can be highly customized using industry-specific solution maps to a number of industries, and (2) the market challenges of the 20 industries covered in this book.

What I like is the consistent way each industry if presented, using a fixed format that discusses each industry's market trends, requirements and solution maps. As a consultant who works across a wide landscape of industries I was able to quickly absorb some of the characteristics of each industry and their key challenges, as well as see how an ERP solution fit within them. Of course, learning about how SAP as a product supports these industries is also useful, and I suspect essential to consultants and constancies focused on this particular product.

The book is a quick read, informative and definitely a worthwhile investment to anyone who is involved in ERP in general and SAP R/3 in particular.