Doom / Gloom / blah blah

For anyone who is as confused as I was about the whole "wtf lj" thing:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5124184/the-russian-bear-slashes-a-social-network (apparently has some inaccuracies which were pointed out in some of the other posts I've read)

Another story here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10132684-36.html?
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/01/06/livejournal-makes-deep-personnel-cuts

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ljarchive/ (a tool to download your lj with comments, I think this is windows only. Even if LJ isn't exploding this is a good idea, you never know what may happen. I'm doing this when I get home since the past 7 years of my life are on this thing)

Sorry I didn't save the link for the Macintosh one but I'm sure you can find it if you are interested (there are definitely some linked in various posts linked from the following):

Lots of links from here: http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/83519.html

IE in quirks mode repeating a letter for no reason

So I built a spotlight module with html/css for our website. It seemed to work fine, I sent it off, then today there is a problem in IE.

I'm not sure if this problem has always been there and we just didn't notice...?

But bottom line is, our website runs in quirks mode. Yes, quirks mode. Apparently one of the developers at the Tech Services Group tried to add a DOCTYPE and it ended up being more work than it was worth, so he backpedaled on it.

Quirks mode + Internet Explorer = everything is possible and nothing can be accomplished.

So anyway we had a headline in the last spotlight. And strangely, like 10 pixels underneath the spotlight block, there was an extra letter. This letter is the last letter of the headline (and it is even linked to the headline so it is definitely somehow related to this block of text). But the headline is complete! So basically the last letter is being repeated in this completely random freaking place.

I have a set width on the block in which this headline sits and this is way outside it. I don't understand :(

I tried a bunch of things and then while I was trying things I commented out the end part of the headline, trying to see if the problem appeared when the headline was only 1 line long. It went away and I slowly started adding more words. I made it to the last word except for the last letter - still no random repeating letter. Huh.

I remove the comment around the last letter, and the bug is back. On a whim, I added a comment at the end of the headline - just:

<-- d -->

And... everything is perfect. What the hell kind of hack is that? I am so confused :( Anyway, problem solved with a ridiculous hack, but I just can't figure out what would have caused it to happen in the first place!

On the other hand, given how quirky quirks mode is, I don't know if I want to know.