Domain: kpmg.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to kpmg.com.
Comments · 286
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Re:Business Discriminates Quite Well
Reference article for Equilar Gender Diversity Index
women on Russell 3000 boards increased in Q1 2018 from 16.5% to 16.9%
Considering that women are, what 50% of the population, I find it hard to believe that woman are not being discriminated in one way or another
Is it gender, or just time? The average age of S&P 500 corporate board members is 62.4 years old, meaning most board members typically have had executive level experience for the better part of 20-30 years. How many women CxOs where there back in the 1980s? Very few. So the current "talent pool" is small. However, given time that will expand. It will change naturally as the current group of female CxOs mature to the age of board-dom (60s) and are thus considered "sound picks".
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something better
TFA is very vague, This might be better for anyone who is interested. The law applies mainly apply to ISPs and online service providers like the summary says. It doesn't sound much different to me than what Europe has, please correct me if I am wrong on that.
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Re:She makes money off of H1-B outsourcing
Yes, lower the corporate tax and raise the individual tax, just like Europe, Scandinavia and other industrialized countries do.
Worldwide corporate tax rates
Individual worldwide tax rates
That is what Trump wants, right? Lower taxes on companies so they can "compete" while raising the tax rates on individuals. I'm sure he wouldn't mind paying a 50% individual tax rate as happens in Belgium, or the 54.25% of Finland. He'd be happy to pay even the lower, 45% tax rate of Germany, right? -
Re:She makes money off of H1-B outsourcing
Yes, lower the corporate tax and raise the individual tax, just like Europe, Scandinavia and other industrialized countries do.
Worldwide corporate tax rates
Individual worldwide tax rates
That is what Trump wants, right? Lower taxes on companies so they can "compete" while raising the tax rates on individuals. I'm sure he wouldn't mind paying a 50% individual tax rate as happens in Belgium, or the 54.25% of Finland. He'd be happy to pay even the lower, 45% tax rate of Germany, right? -
Re:Unnecessary, but profitable.
It's not so much the cost of making the product; as others have shown below, that's really a push. A few dollars one way or another on a $300 COGM product. The BIG difference is taxation. Sell that phone for $700 - that's $400 of profit. China's tax rate is about 60% of the US - meaning on that $400 profit, in the US you'll pay around $160 in taxes. In China, you'll pay around $100. That's a $60 difference - that's the big money.
Companies don't just look overseas because of lower labor costs (or lower manufacturing costs) - they look overseas for maximizing profit, and taxes can be a huge chunk of that. Add in 24/7 logistics support throughout China (ever have to do banking on the weekend? Simple in China - rather complex and onerous in the US) and you find the total costs involved are skewed against the US.
Worst of all, this is an area where we are 100% in control of the problem. Simply cut the corporate tax rate in the US down to the OECD average - 24% - and we'd have a tax rate slightly lower than China, and thus eliminate that penalty from discussion. Instead of building products overseas, and leaving the profits over there to be taxed there, companies might choose to build here and leave their profits in the US.
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Re:Its not the technology - it is the tech company
where we are not the highest corporate taxed country on earth.
Except we're not the highest. Chad and the UAE have the highest.
Also, to make up for the loss of revenue, we would have to raise the personal income tax. We could be like Germany with a 45% personal income tax, Norway with 47.2% or Japan at 50.84%.
Oh wait, you thought by lowering corporate taxes things would work themselves out. Now I see the problem.
A comparison of corporate and personal income tax rates -
Re:Its not the technology - it is the tech company
where we are not the highest corporate taxed country on earth.
Except we're not the highest. Chad and the UAE have the highest.
Also, to make up for the loss of revenue, we would have to raise the personal income tax. We could be like Germany with a 45% personal income tax, Norway with 47.2% or Japan at 50.84%.
Oh wait, you thought by lowering corporate taxes things would work themselves out. Now I see the problem.
A comparison of corporate and personal income tax rates -
Re:Mind boggling
Look at Edison Labs, the Xerox PARC, Bell Labs...Do you actually believe that wall st today would support these kinds of long-term research projects, or shitcan them so fast it'd give a snowball in hell whiplash after they refused to promise "new deliverables that increase synergy and shareholder value" in time for the quarterly report?
Would they? They do! Examine the screen of your smartphone — is it not drastically better, than what was available 15 years ago? How much is Intel spending on further reducing the element sizes of their chips? Companies are doing the research — including long-term research — that they think, they need. That some people disagree with their opinion on what ought to be researched, that's a different story.
There are two other problems, that might be contributing to the problem you are talking about — not that we have any way of measuring anything. First is with the public's attitude — so often demonstrated on this very web-site — towards intellectual property in general and patents in particular. A lot of people believe, intellectual property — be it blueprints for some gizmo, or a dress-design, or a song, or a video-compression algorithm — is an "evil" concept, that, quite paradoxically, only cripples innovation.
People claiming: "Wait a minute! That was my idea!!" are immediately dismissed as "patent trolls" until proven otherwise — and those, who purchased an idea from the original inventor are almost never able to do the proving (not in the court of public opinion anyway) — an unfortunate state of affairs, that puts a heavy discount on active methodical research (though spontaneous innovations can still occur, of course). This removes the incentive from spending on research — you spend real tangible dollars, but the result is something, that can be stolen by others, who will not even risk being labeled (much less prosecuted) as thieves.
And the second problem is the research done by tax-funded universities. The corporations — as well as you and me — are taxed (and rather heavily) and then not us, and not the corporations, but "wise" men decide, how to spend that money. And on the occasion such public grants do result in a useful invention, the hitherto publicly-funded scientists open up their own company to exploit it...
We get the worst of both worlds: unlike a Socialist country, we don't get to force these public servants to share their invention with the rest of us, but, unlike a Capitalist country, we were forced to pay them and are still forced to pay others like them. And, to put us back on topic, none of that research counts as "corporate" leading the short-sighted public to accuse the (invariably "evil") corporations of being myopic themselves.
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Not moving assets, keeping them remote.
Companies are not "moving assets to another country" (by which you obviously mean earnings). They are earning money in other countries, on which BTW they pay tax in those countries, and then the profit they have opted not to move back to the U.S. because they face a monstrous tax (40%!!!!) on the amount the would bring back, which remember THEY HAVE ALREADY PAID TAXES ON WHERE INCOME WAS MADE.
Look at the chart of corporate tax rates around the world, the US rate is way higher than any other country.
Would you take a 40% pay cut on your earnings?
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Re:Sweden != low corporate taxes
Corporate tax rate is relatively low. 22% in Sweden vs 40% in the United States.
http://www.kpmg.com/global/en/...
Don't get me wrong, I'd confidently place a socialist label on Sweden as a whole but it's not as socialist as some might think.
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Re:Great. Where are my cheap solar panels?
Oil field privatization in IRAQ due to war spending, CIA coups to overthrow leaders that interfere with US owned oil interests. Oh, also the tax breaks for exploration: http://www.us.kpmg.com/microsite/taxnewsflash/2012/Jun/061812%20GG%20and%20IDC%20Part%20II.pdf
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Re:Who's chasing them?
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Re:Capitalist flight
Although the nominal corporate tax rate is not that low, the actual (average) taxes paid by corporations is quite low compared to other developed countries because of the convoluted tax breaks written into the law.
Citation please. I'd like to see an example of a US company legally pay less than 20% on income of at least 10 million in profits.
I'll use Intel as an example, since they post excellent reports and are a large multinational corporation. http://www.intc.com/intelAR2008/financial/statements/note23/index.html Notice their effective rate of between 28% and 31%(make sure to read about the 24%). Amazing that the government gives them tax credits to do R&D and manufacturing locally. You'd think that they'd just lower the tax rate.
Is that low compared to other nations? This data says no: http://www.kpmg.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Corporate-and-Indirect-Tax-Rate-Survey-2008v2.pdf The average rate in 2008 is 25.9%. In fact Intel's effective rate is higher than over 70% of other nations including the entire EU which has been lowering corporate taxes over the past decade.
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Re:I wish Internet advertisers would learn...
Here's a good one. Try visiting the KPMG homepage with Mozilla. You get . . . nothing. Not even a browser compatibility error. Just lovely whitespace and title bar text. There's not a single line of plain text anywhere on the page.
And it's not just the U.S. site - the Australian page only gives you a single site menu and a couple of colored bars. It's absolutely unforgivable for a company that large to be that ignorant about web design.
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Re:Idealism must mesh with reality...Menus? So you are mad that some menus don't work on the Dell site with Mozilla?
Have you ever tried going to The KPMG website with Mozilla? There is a nice blank page waiting for all those who do not use IE.
You would think with a company as large as KMPG, one of the big 4 accounting firms, they would check for compatibility with non-IE browsers and at least have some sort of page that the rest of us could view.
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taboo linkswww.kpmg.com
silly bastards, if they don't want to be linked, they shouldn't have a web page. They should invent thier own non-http protocol that doesn't allow linking, or more importantly, allows restriction of linking. As long as their using our protocol, they have to play by our rules.
nah nah nah naaaah naaaahh
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Re:Another bit of news...
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Re:Another bit of news...
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Re:Another bit of news...
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Re:Another bit of news...
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Re:Another bit of news...
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Re:Another bit of news...
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Re:Another bit of news...
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KPMG Redux?Some of us might remember when KPMG had the big hullaballo about people linking to them, apparently TrapWare (the guys that make the anti-spyware) have a similar thing on their website:
As stated in the Terms and Conditions for Use of Trapware's web site, to obtain permission to link to this web site or any other web site owned and operated by Trapware, please contact the Legal Department of Trapware. No trademark or logo of Trapware may be used as a "hot" link to any Trapware or other web site without the prior written approval of Trapware. The following guidelines are given to assist you and expedite your request for linking to Trapware. Please do not link to Trapware's web site until you have received written authorization to do so.
This is from http://www.trapware.com/companyLinking.html (terms and condition violation here).
Yeah right...So here's another TrapWare terms and conditions violation! YAY!
If he really wanted to prevent linking, he'd set it up in apache so it only accepts incoming connections for legally authorised URLs, but judging by their website, they're quite oblivious to the nature of the Internet.
I encourage everyone to post links to their website in the blogs, just like what happened to KPMG a few months ago.
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KPMG Sux
Heh. Now if they get their way (which they can't), they can charge for linking to THEIR site, and everyone will rebel against the suits by linking everywhere. They will get so many site hits and ad revenue... Ingenious. (sarcasm)
Fucking Lamerz -
All your links are belong to KPMG/BT!With reference to this story and also this story about this company, I would like to challenge BT's and KPMG's assertions that I am violating their rights by linking to them. Come on guys!
Hahah! How much more ridiculous can things like this become?
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All your links are belong to KPMG/BT!With reference to this story and also this story about this company, I would like to challenge BT's and KPMG's assertions that I am violating their rights by linking to them. Come on guys!
Hahah! How much more ridiculous can things like this become?
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All your links are belong to KPMG/BT!With reference to this story and also this story about this company, I would like to challenge BT's and KPMG's assertions that I am violating their rights by linking to them. Come on guys!
Hahah! How much more ridiculous can things like this become?
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Re:Big deal..its a request
From their "legal" disclaimer in the first paragraph:
"The information provided is not intended to replace or serve as substitute for any legal (in those jurisdictions where KPMG is permitted to practice law), accounting, tax or other professional advice, consultation or service."
To me it sounds like they just disqualified their disclaimer from being used for any sort of legal purposes. Obviously the disclaimer is on their site, and they say in it that anything on their site is not intended for legal purposes. -
Re:Big deal..its a request
couldn't they just block all pages but their index for all browsers who don't send a referer header indicating they came from another page on their site?
They could, but then people using proxies that strip referrer headers would be left out in the cold. (Unless the policy is "don't serve the content if a referrer header does exist but it does not identify another KPMG web page").
On the other hand, given how much large companies usually care about people who dare to surf the web on anything other than MSIE on Windows with JavaScript & ActiveX turned on and a 1024x768x16bpp display, they'll probably just say "use a proper Internet connection" to anyone who falls afoul of their referrer filtering.
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Re:Ugly FlashI have Netscape 4.78 with junkbuster and default settings, i.e. junkbuster sends "Mozilla/3.01Gold (Macintosh; I; 68K)" as browser name.
Result: when I try to access the home page of KPMG, I get redirected to a error page, which, in a twist of circular logic, tells me that this object has been removed and my be found here, where 'here' is exactly the same error page (!!!). Anyone knows whether KPMG has already applied for a patent on self-referring error pages ?
(Note: if I bypass junkbuster, the error page seems to work somewhat better ...)I hope their consulting skills are better than their webmasters.
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Re:Ugly FlashI have Netscape 4.78 with junkbuster and default settings, i.e. junkbuster sends "Mozilla/3.01Gold (Macintosh; I; 68K)" as browser name.
Result: when I try to access the home page of KPMG, I get redirected to a error page, which, in a twist of circular logic, tells me that this object has been removed and my be found here, where 'here' is exactly the same error page (!!!). Anyone knows whether KPMG has already applied for a patent on self-referring error pages ?
(Note: if I bypass junkbuster, the error page seems to work somewhat better ...)I hope their consulting skills are better than their webmasters.
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Re:Ugly FlashI have Netscape 4.78 with junkbuster and default settings, i.e. junkbuster sends "Mozilla/3.01Gold (Macintosh; I; 68K)" as browser name.
Result: when I try to access the home page of KPMG, I get redirected to a error page, which, in a twist of circular logic, tells me that this object has been removed and my be found here, where 'here' is exactly the same error page (!!!). Anyone knows whether KPMG has already applied for a patent on self-referring error pages ?
(Note: if I bypass junkbuster, the error page seems to work somewhat better ...)I hope their consulting skills are better than their webmasters.
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My personal linkpolicy
Eyh! Stop showing links to me! Thats not my policy. Go away. I'm gonna send a request to all of you demanding that you remove the links whenever they appear over my internet connection. While links earlier was something useful on the net, it's well-known as the "one thing that always leads to porn, as long as you click enough of them".
I'm not sure if thats a problem. I may for some strange reason end up surfing pr0n.
hmm. better keep those links coming. -
This has nothing to do with the DMCA.Here we go again.
The DMCA outlaws "[circumvention of] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected [by copyright law]." This is not a technological measure, nor is it a violation of the First Amendment (Congress shall pass no law, but KPMG can do whatever the hell they want.), just a really stupid EULA. Now, if they were blocking access for everyone but those coming from the licenced URLs, and you wrote some Javascript to forge an authorized referral, that would be circumvention of a technological measure.
Do you read me, pooky?
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Their disclaimer and Robots.txt
Their disclaimer http://www.kpmg.com/disclaimer.html says "Based on the fundamental universal condition of the electronic communication process, KPMG does not guarantee or warrant the Site will be uninterrupted". Can anyone say
/. effect?
I really love their http://www.kpmg.com/robots.txt. it says:
# everyone go away
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
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Their disclaimer and Robots.txt
Their disclaimer http://www.kpmg.com/disclaimer.html says "Based on the fundamental universal condition of the electronic communication process, KPMG does not guarantee or warrant the Site will be uninterrupted". Can anyone say
/. effect?
I really love their http://www.kpmg.com/robots.txt. it says:
# everyone go away
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
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Obligatory
All your link are belong to us.
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The website's proud, proud designers....
Here's the very first comment from the source for the KPMG.com website.
Was't Razorfish sued by another client? This flash intro is prima facie evidence of monumental hubris.
<!-- r a z o r f i s h , Inc.
Description: KPMG [home]
Created: 2000-04-20 jj
(c) 2000, Razorfish, Inc. all rights reserved.
KPMG LLP
Dan Wells
Matt Michelman
Jennifer Holly
Derek "Uber" Wargo
Mike Lavine
Joey B.
--> -
Re:Flash
I can't believe Razorfish created that site! Most of their work kicks ass - maybe it was RF who asked KPMG to stop people linking to it...
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Lets make KPMG really angry!I heard KPMG sucks big time... they are an aweful financial institute. Don't ever use their services. To see their evilness, click this link: http://www.kpmg.com !
(this should make them REALLY REALLY angry)
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you must also have browser XTheir tech group also insists that you use a 4.0 browser, Acrobat Reader 4.0, "Windows Media Player or Real Media G2 Player", and "A 56K or higher dial-up modem".
So I thought I would try my browser, but it didn't work. I end up in an endless redirection loop (HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved).
So I ran the command ">lynx --version", and I see that I an running "Lynx Version 2.8.3rel.1 (23 Apr 2000)". Obviously not a 4.0 browser. And I guess that they don't want to hear from anyone with a 33.6 modem. I guess that they don't want my business, because I don't qualify enough to view their site.
Can anyone render it in Opera 4 or higher?
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Did he even violate KPMG's policy?According to KPMG's disclaimer page:
Third Party Links are provided as a convenience to our users. KPMG does not control and is not responsible for any of these sites or their content. KPMG is obligated to protect its reputation and trademarks and KPMG reserves the right to request [emphasis mine] removal of any link to our website.
It sounds like harassing this guy with lawyers is beyond what they say they'll do.Explicit permission is required to use the KPMG logo. To request this written approval, contact the Webmaster or send an e-mail under "Contact Us." The following web link activities are explicitly prohibited by KPMG and may present trademark and copyright infringement issues:
- Links that involve unauthorized use of our logo
- Framing, inline links or metatags
- Hyperlinks or a form of link that disguises the URL and bypass the homepage
Silly company.
--Ben
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Re:Question for someone who "knows the internet"
Some sites are so vast, that spidering them is a technical problem. I once was diagnosing a problem for someone to determine why their site wasn't getting a listing in google. So I spidered their site myself. The next morning when I got up, I found that the spider was still running and had downloaded over 1.6 gigabytes. Well, now I know why they didn't get listed. Some of the pages were so totally dynamic that they were effectively infinite. There were lots of redundancies in the pages that site generated, but they were all uniquely different, too.
I once made a spider trap by having a bunch of pages where an added path component was a 128 bit random number converted to hexadecimal. It was really a CGI script that ignored the number which came in on PATH_INFO. It then generated 20 new 128-bit random numbers and produced some HTML with links to them. Any stupid robot would just keep following until the galaxy was sucked into a black hole.
Still, not wanting to be spidered, and not wanting even your home page to be linked to are two different things. You can't very easily control having your site spidered, so the robots.txt thing was invented to let you have some control. But for blocking links, that's easy. The HTTP request comes in with an extra line called "Referer:" (yes, it's misspelled in the standard, so we're stuck with it that way). All KPMG needs to do is to just test for "Referer:" by whatever programming mechanisms they use (their web server is IIS/4.0 for anyone who didn't notice). And they already do have something programmed in to check what browser you are using and redirect to their browser whining page. And they even have a robots.txt file, so it's not like they are totally clueless, as it might otherwise seem.
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Re:Question for someone who "knows the internet"
Some sites are so vast, that spidering them is a technical problem. I once was diagnosing a problem for someone to determine why their site wasn't getting a listing in google. So I spidered their site myself. The next morning when I got up, I found that the spider was still running and had downloaded over 1.6 gigabytes. Well, now I know why they didn't get listed. Some of the pages were so totally dynamic that they were effectively infinite. There were lots of redundancies in the pages that site generated, but they were all uniquely different, too.
I once made a spider trap by having a bunch of pages where an added path component was a 128 bit random number converted to hexadecimal. It was really a CGI script that ignored the number which came in on PATH_INFO. It then generated 20 new 128-bit random numbers and produced some HTML with links to them. Any stupid robot would just keep following until the galaxy was sucked into a black hole.
Still, not wanting to be spidered, and not wanting even your home page to be linked to are two different things. You can't very easily control having your site spidered, so the robots.txt thing was invented to let you have some control. But for blocking links, that's easy. The HTTP request comes in with an extra line called "Referer:" (yes, it's misspelled in the standard, so we're stuck with it that way). All KPMG needs to do is to just test for "Referer:" by whatever programming mechanisms they use (their web server is IIS/4.0 for anyone who didn't notice). And they already do have something programmed in to check what browser you are using and redirect to their browser whining page. And they even have a robots.txt file, so it's not like they are totally clueless, as it might otherwise seem.
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Re:Question for someone who "knows the internet"
Some sites are so vast, that spidering them is a technical problem. I once was diagnosing a problem for someone to determine why their site wasn't getting a listing in google. So I spidered their site myself. The next morning when I got up, I found that the spider was still running and had downloaded over 1.6 gigabytes. Well, now I know why they didn't get listed. Some of the pages were so totally dynamic that they were effectively infinite. There were lots of redundancies in the pages that site generated, but they were all uniquely different, too.
I once made a spider trap by having a bunch of pages where an added path component was a 128 bit random number converted to hexadecimal. It was really a CGI script that ignored the number which came in on PATH_INFO. It then generated 20 new 128-bit random numbers and produced some HTML with links to them. Any stupid robot would just keep following until the galaxy was sucked into a black hole.
Still, not wanting to be spidered, and not wanting even your home page to be linked to are two different things. You can't very easily control having your site spidered, so the robots.txt thing was invented to let you have some control. But for blocking links, that's easy. The HTTP request comes in with an extra line called "Referer:" (yes, it's misspelled in the standard, so we're stuck with it that way). All KPMG needs to do is to just test for "Referer:" by whatever programming mechanisms they use (their web server is IIS/4.0 for anyone who didn't notice). And they already do have something programmed in to check what browser you are using and redirect to their browser whining page. And they even have a robots.txt file, so it's not like they are totally clueless, as it might otherwise seem.
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Re:The objectives of KPMG
"Yes folks, we have a deep understanding of Web technologies. BTW, you can't link to us without a prior agreement..."
...or even view their site in some browsers. Of course that's probably another one of their policies: you must use a "KPMG approved" browser to view their site.
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Re:Netscape? Yes, KPMG, it IS still alive...
What kind of "e-business consulting company" has a homepage that won't even load in Netscape 6.2?
They probably don't realize that "e-business" has anything to do with making an accessible web site.
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They can enforce their policy
If KPMG can enforce their policy easily enough by simply not delivering content when the HTTP request comes in asking for their site. They say they are "e-business savvy", so they should have no trouble setting this up in just a few minutes.
The web is about linking. That's why they call it "The Web". If KPMG doesn't want to join in, then they should just stay out. And there are many ways to do that, including still having a site served by HTTP to send content to whoever types their name in manually, or links from sites they approve of. They should just do it and prove their competence in running their site their way.
But why the hell would I want to link to their site anyway. It sucks! The whole damn thing is a morass of lame Javascript. They can't even put plain HTML in and have to have Javascript generate it. It's clear to me that they don't know how to do things on the server side.
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They can enforce their policy
If KPMG can enforce their policy easily enough by simply not delivering content when the HTTP request comes in asking for their site. They say they are "e-business savvy", so they should have no trouble setting this up in just a few minutes.
The web is about linking. That's why they call it "The Web". If KPMG doesn't want to join in, then they should just stay out. And there are many ways to do that, including still having a site served by HTTP to send content to whoever types their name in manually, or links from sites they approve of. They should just do it and prove their competence in running their site their way.
But why the hell would I want to link to their site anyway. It sucks! The whole damn thing is a morass of lame Javascript. They can't even put plain HTML in and have to have Javascript generate it. It's clear to me that they don't know how to do things on the server side.