This symbol has a square in the middle, triangles on the sides, and arrows in the corners. What does it mean? My Apple Remote was not working with my iMac which is running 10.7.4. 

When I attempted to pair the remote to the computer, by holding down the menu and the next track buttons, the following symbol appears in the center of my screen.



After resetting the SMC, the Apple remote is working as usual. In particular, holding down the menu and the next track buttons displays the "linked chain" icon, indicating that the remote has been paired to the computer.

But I am still curious, what does the image mean?
Since no-one has a good guess, here is how I would try to track it down.


Turn off Time Machine
Reboot the mac
open terminal
run this command sudo fs_usage -w
let fs_usage run for a bit and make sure all disk access is to a minimum,
repeat the steps to make that icon appear - noting the time to the second
press ⌃-C to kill the fs_usage dump and scroll back to see what application or files were being read when the icon appeared.