APEX

Does anybody have idea how to prevent hourglass cursor when using Ajax. Sometimes you need to have many server requests for small portion of data but frequently - let's say each 1 or 3 sec. In such case flickering of mouse cursor from from arrow to hourglass and back to arrow is not desired. Has anybody been able to do something about it? I know it's IE feature and so and so but still ...
I have done some search on this problem and found very little.
I have already tried document.body.style.cursor = "default"; doesn't seem to work.

Here is very good example of what I mean:
http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=25473:1

This page just uses Ajax to show the server time in a text box - notice the constant flickering of the mouse cursor ? This can be annoying especially if you are trying to implement something like instant messenger or some kind of game.

Any thoughts?
George