WTF are these characters!?

[Ultimater]

Click the link to see the screen shot I took of the forums.
http://ultimiacian.tripod.com/images/screenshot.bmp
I've been seeing them for quite some time now as I browse the forums...

[Jupac]

Maybe its an ad that got messed.

[Jona]

Does it only happen when you use AOL? Does it show up when you use other browsers? I haven’t seen that before.

[Sanim]

It just happened to me on the bottom of the forum index page. I'm using Safari.
http://home.earthlink.net/~lotrme/images/symbols.gif

[Jona]

Ooh! Now I see it. Looks like a binary file was opened as plain/text...

[Compguy Pete]

I also had an odd issue pop up yesterday I got an email for a thread that had not been replied to in about 2 months.

Yet I just got notified yesterday...

[gorky]

I'm getting it every now and then as well. (http://img86.echo.cx/img86/2439/wtf9bs.gif) (The image will probably be bigger than your window)

This one says (with added linebreaks):

[size=1]reshold=30&IC_BatchSize=30&referer=sysopt.earthweb.com&submit=1&fields=
&dre= HTTP/1.1" 200 24421 "http://sysopt.earthweb.com/" "Mozilla/4.5 [en] (Win98; I)"
atuileries-115-2-1-5.w80-11.abo.wanadoo.fr - - [19/Oct/2004:09:54:23 -0400] "GET /www.newsbureau.com?IC_QueryText=raffarin&submit=1&IC_QueryDatabase=www.internetnewsbureau.com&IC_BatchSize=10&IC_RelevanceThreshold=
&IC_SortBy=Date&IC_StartNumber=0&fields=&dre=&referer=www.newsbureau.com HTTP/1.1" 200 13666 "-" "Mozilla/4.5 [en] (Win98; I)"
cpe-138-130-200-41.qld.bigpond.net.au - - [19/Oct/2004:09:54:23 -0400] "POST /www.wi-fiplanet.com HTTP/1.1" 200 31765 "http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/" "Mozilla/4.0
(compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)" 66.46.168.241 - - [19/Oct/2004:09:54:23 -0400] "GET /sysopt.earthweb.com?IC_QueryText=kjhsdksfd&IC_StartNumber=0&IC_QueryDatabase=sy

[Jona]

Hey, same here, only I got three emails (two from the same post), but both of them were really old. What’s vBulletin just catching up? :p

[MstrBob]

I only got one, but it was for a thread that hadn't been replied to in months.

[Jupac]

Geting that on the side ads too
http://kidscript.com/wtf899.JPG

[Ultimater]

Here's another one of them screen shots (but on the top like gorky's):
http://ultimiacian.tripod.com/images/screenshot1.bmp

[Ultimater]

I've also noticed that the server has been down alot recently.
I'd be browsing the forums logged-in as Ultimater and I'd click on some thread then the next thing you know is that the server is full or down.
I think that this website has been getting too many hits lately and you should upgrade your server to a mainframe :) well, you don't need to go that high, yet ;)

[sclark]

Thanks folks--as you've noticed, we're having some issues with the server, but should have it fixed shortly. Thanks for the note!

[Ultimater]

no problem

[rhsunderground]

just for the record, i get the following: *]-?*?´ª?©*[@KP«?Õ?@IDú?ÂL0j³Çö"euø³6ð@?*B´Ç¿oØ BFÙÊ?9¢Êê°C;?4ͪÔP?Ääο7¸;{S??'°sòÊ ôÊ5,²È¹TU£Ê"8ï¬J= ¡J#¯Èüs QOU?,=?A[yXÓVTÿCµP7¶HâY]DÀ??A U?@W[]Ç?Vwñ¢@òÌøO?]?·?µrVÒm?Ö?iàÿíä?B Ô¥?;Õæ?¯nÌiDRÇ?PUGãÖ?î¸åÎ9Eî&¥ÓTôæ8??A½fÍ?ÿÄ?05H'?9 ?$Nôä?ã?ÉÉCíÿ\*xëàÛ?|]êF?òÕ¼B?úê?JtNaH!in rounds, where i get it for 5 pages in a row, then 5 not, or something like that.

[Stephen Philbin]

Aye, I got the same thing a lot too. I just figured it was just some ad that relied on the browser being IE or the OS being Windows. I see a lot of screw-ups on the web because of those assumptions so I just ignore them these days.