weird problem with base_url();

[eluser]netameta1[/eluser]
well i have several links that uses base_url();/home/xxx
when i am in the www.domain.com/ or www.domain.com/home

the links i have appears correct and point to the right directions E.G
www.domain.com/home/signup

link

Code:

<a href="&lt;? base_url() ?&gt;home/signup">Sign Up</a>

When i am in www.domain.com/home/ or www.domain.com/home/signup the links that looks the same like the above Will point to wrong address EG : www.domain.com/home/home/features or so ..

Dont know what to do about it, i am thinking maybe htaccess problem because sometimes i still see index.php sometimes in the URL.. this is my .htaccess file.

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|robots\.txt|css|images)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

Really any help would be highly appreciated.