June 05, 2008
We own your mouse!
Apparently Kendall Bioresearch thinks they own my mouse:
(And yes, the above picture contains some of their copyrighted picture. I took it as payment for my stolen mouse-click.)
I use Optimoz mouse gestures in my browser: they really speed up my browsing. I right-click and drag the gesture, and the browser responds. Unfortunately a number of pages try to protect images by not only intercepting right-clicks but displaying an officious copyright dialog box that interfere with my browsing. But I think the above is the most rude one I have seen so far. I don't need their permission to use my browser.
The whole method is stupid. As LSW wrote:
"Using such scripts only calls me a thief. You interfere with the workings of my browser and my workflow. You have no right to mess with my browser so I will never go toyour site again and I will tell people not to go there as you have no respect for others. Generally speaking you will just piss people off with such scripts."
Now I'm going to seriously look for ways of disabling these annoyances. Turning of Javascript is a start and improves safety anyway. In Firefox I can also selectively turn off the ability to change context menus (by using the advanced Javascript options), but I will still get the popup if I happen to start my gesture on top of an image. Time to see if there is some nice extension that allow me to toggle Javascript - ideally with a gesture.
And for good information about ground beetles, don't miss Ground Beetles of Ireland.
Posted by Anders3 at June 5, 2008 12:55 AM