I have this site set up so that people can't "direct link" our graphic files into another site. In other words, another site can't post one of the images stored on the server we pay for into their web site. Get it? It's not like we ever come close to exceeding our bandwidth, but it's the principle, Jack. 

And T&A gets a lot of hits from people Googling images of Rachael Ray and Charo. Maybe they start out searching Spanish recipes and get sidetracked. I don't know. But when one of our images show up in the Google search and someone clicks on that image, the anti-direct link thing kicks in, and the surfer gets a web page that looks like this:

It's meant as a joke. OK, it's not that funny of a joke, but it's more than the vanilla default 403, and it's that extra attention to detail that the vast T&A readership has come to expect from us.  

Apparently, there are a lot of thin skinned people out there because I've received some negative feedback on the 403 page shown above. Just last week, I received an email from a reader named Sherrie saying:

You people have a respectful photo of Charo and I clicked to view and got a rude on screen note that there is a forbidden note and rather stupid I say, someone is a nit wit. Why post a nice clean photo if it cannot be viewed, go figure

I don't know what's funnier: Sherrie's ire over not being able to view the photo of Charo or the fact that she considers a photo of Charo in a wet t-shirt respectful. 

And then today, someone left this comment while trying to view a Rachael Ray photo.

Is it me or are these people nuts? Or stupid, because all they have to do is right-click on the image and they can save the damn thing to their computer. Seriously. Is it me? If it's me, just tell me. Really, please. I won't do anything about it, but you know, go ahead and tell me. 

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Hodge-Podge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.