lines writes "I was amazed to find out that the Mandelbrot Set was discovered by a 13th century monk -- way, way before the advent of non-human computers. Apparently, a mathematician spied a mini-mandelbrot masquerading as the Star of Bethlehem in an illuminated manuscript's depiction of the Nativity scene. It turns out that this particular monk, Udo of Aachen, was attempting to mathematically describe a soul's path to Heaven. (For those unfamiliar with it, here's a quick introduction to the Mandelbrot Set.)" Update 30 mins later by J : Yes, this is an old April Fool's joke - and a cleverly done one, too.

Gaming has dramatically widened the growing cultural schism between the young and old. Historians and sociologists call the adult world's response to gaming a "moral panic," defined as a severe societal response to a dramatic development that elders and institutions can't control or understand, so therefore demonize and fear. Even before this, the young are increasingly coming to believe that older people have less and less to teach them. Second in a series.

The pace of cultural change in the western world has accelerated so rapidly that it's reached the breaking point, according to the late anthropologist Margaret Mead. And that was before the Net, and the ascent of role playing and electronic gaming. No longer a subculture, gaming is becoming our ascendant culture, growing more than any other cultural form, sparking a moral panic and affecting the way people think, play, learn, communicate and work. First in a series.

Nerds writes "There's an auction on eBay for a console game library that goes back to about 1986. The seller has included all of the boxes and manuals for over 13 systems and a few hundred games. Everything from the NES to the Virtual Boy to the Dreamcast is represented, along with several systems I'd never heard of. Current bid: $15,000. " Its got tons of normal stuff (NES, SNES, SMS, Genesis etc) and a phenomonal number of games. Even a 3DO (when I was a kid, god I wanted one of those things... course now it doesn't even hold up). I hope you get a little jolt of warm memories when you read it too.

Walton C. Gibson writes: "Instead of a portable 2600, how about a device that plays EVERY 2600 game ever made in hardware, and it all fits inside a single Atari 7800 enclosure? Check out Bankzilla -- as well as some this guy's other projects like the NES music format, making a portable NES."

LinuxBand sent in linkage to a nice story talking about the NES as it now is celebrating its 15th year. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't had a nintendo, I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA.

Recently you asked Indrema founder John Gildred about the Linux-based console system his company plans to introduce. Here's what he has to say about its hackability, strategy, developers and more -- thanks for the in-depth answers, John.

Anonymous Coward writes: "IGN Pocket posted the first ever screen shots of Nintendo's Game Boy Advance. The images' quality is quite poor, but you can clearly see that the console is able to push out about twice as much color than a Super NES."

Fros1y asks: "Okay, it seems like Microsoft may well make a big splash in the console market when they unroll the X-Box. With all the emulators out there, why wouldn't Microsoft expand their box's ability? If they took the new Playstation emulator and ported it for the system, they could tap a large market right off the bat. Roll in some cute NES and SNES emulators and they'd have an interesting system. Being Microsoft and all, they might even want to reverse engineer or license N64 and PSX systems. I guess there might be problems with ROM loading and such, but I'd bet that Microsoft could use their clout to license older games and put them onto a network pay system. Why wouldn't Microsoft want to pursue this kind of market strategy? Or have they already and I'm just out of the loop?" A nice thought, but Microsoft would have to play extremely nice with a lot of people to pull this one off. Thoughts?

skia writes "Chock full of yummie old-school NES goodness and metal guitar/drum beats, The Minibosses play your favorite songs from Metroid, Castlevania, and even Contra!" I've been listening to this for the past hour or so, and it's very cool. They've been around for a while. My friend Erik says he heard of them on Zophar's Domain.

taggedfordeletion was one of the many, many readers to beseige us with news of the announcement from a company called Indrema of their Indrema L600E set-top box, a Linux-based gaming machine. Actually, it promises a lot more than gaming -- the company touts it as a "Web console" that will also serve as a Web browsing platform and (wonder of wonders) MP3 jukebox. As taggedfordeletion points out, "The Internet capabilities of the box are especially promising, including support for DSL and cable modems."

Splitzy writes, "Square has finally released the site for the Final Fantasy movie. It includes background on the movie, and two short trailers in Quicktime format. You can check out the site here." The movie was first mentioned here a while back, but Hooboy, this looks like a good one. Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi and Peri Gilpin? It's a far cry from FFIII on my NES.