I downloaded the torrent with the entire blockchain and tried to open bootstrap.dat.

With its 17GB it is obviously too large for most text editors, so I programmed a VB.NET app to do this.

Assuming encoding ISO-8859-1, I get this rather confusing line:
""ù¾´Ù
 
                                   ;£íýz{²zÇ,>gvaÈȊQ2:Ÿ¸ªK^J)«_Iÿÿ ¬+|

   
                                ÿÿÿÿMÿÿ 
EThe Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banksÿÿÿÿ
ò*
   CAgŠý°þUH'gñ¦q0·\Ö¨(à9   ¦ybàêaÞ¶Iö¼?Lï8ÄóUåÁÞ\8M÷ºWŠLp+kñ_¬    ù¾´Ù×   
   oâŒ""

Assuming UTF8 does not make much more sense either:
"����
 
                                   ;���z{�z�,>gv�a�È�Q2:���K^J)�_I�� �+|

   
                                ����M�� 
EThe Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks����
�*
   CAg����UH'g�q0�\֨(�9   �yb��a޶I��?L�8��U���\8M���W�Lp+k�_�    �����   
   o�"

Will it work if I change the encoding on this VB.NET code?
System.Text.Encoding.UTF8