Rumors have been flying all over the internet over the highly anticipated (or for homebrewers, disliked) firmware 3.00 update. You saw some of the pictures from E3 and from other sources, and now it's (almost) here. The date for the 3.00 update will be released on October 19! As you can see, there are many new features and even a new layout! By the way, there is now a "Remote Play" option under the network connections tab, for wireless play between the PSP and PS3!

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The article above was created by a user on MyQJ and received enough Jumps to be automatically posted to PSP Updates. As such, it may not be accurate and does not reflect the opinions of QJ.NET or its staff.

Now, as I'm sure many of you may have seen, there were pictures flying around the PSP community during E3 showcasing the 'almighty' PSP firmware 3.00. The estimated release date was October, and I'm being very optimistic in hoping that it will be coming out soon.

Contrary to this, there have been rumours flying around that 3.00 won't be released until the PS3 is available in Japan, as 3.00 is quite heavily based around PS3-PSP connectivity (apparently, some of the core files for this connectivity were slyly put in firmware 2.80) so we may not even see it until mid-November.

I personally can not wait for 3.00 as I was always a big fan of PS1 games and the PS1 emulation should, theoretically, be perfect (let's face it, we were all impressed when Kaz played Ridge Racer 1 at E3 on the psp), so here's hoping that it shall be released REAL soon, as the community may expand further due to the additional capabilities being crammed into 3.00. *hype begins*

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The article above was created by a user on MyQJ and received enough Jumps to be automatically posted to PSP Updates. As such, it may not be accurate and does not reflect the opinions of QJ.NET or its staff.

Due to insistent demands from various people for a TA-082 2.71 Kernel Access tutorial, I decided I would go ahead and be the first one as I also posted the news about the exploit. Well, frankly this isn't hard at all and if you read the readme's then its super easy but for all of you who dont wanna waste their time reading through a very long text file, I thought I could smooth things out. Ok, so lets get to business.. things needed for the exploit are:

1. 2.71 Firmware Update, which you can download here.
2. Dark_AleX's HEN Revision B XMB Homebrew launcher, which you can get here.
3. 2.71 HEN compatible Devhook.

Ok, once you have everything downloaded on your PC, you need to update your PSP to firmware 2.71 if its not already updated.

1. Copy the UPDATE folder from the download below into your PSP/GAMES folder.

Now, start up the update on your PSP by navigating to the Memory card under right below where the UMD icon is with which you load up all your UMD's. NOTE: Before updating your PSP, be sure that the PSP battery is fully charged and that the AC Adapter is plugged in and so is the Memory card. After updating, you will want to load up HEN on your newly upgraded PSP and for that, read on:

- Copy all contents inside MS_ROOT to the root of your memory stick.
- Go to the PHOTO viewer of the XMB and enter in the folder "HEN".
- If the psp just froze, reboot your psp and try again. Currently the tiff is very unstable and it is only executed sometimes. I'll try to improve that in the future.
- The first time you run the program, you will see quickly a blue screen, and after that a screen
that can be of two colors:

* Red: the files couldn't be written to the flash (it happens a few times). Just keep trying.
* Green: The files were written successfully, after that, the xmb will be rebooted. Now you can run the homebrew in format prepared for 2.71. (see details below).

- As mentioned before, the patch will remain resident in memory, and even entering sleep mode won't delete it. Only a hardware reset will remove the program from memory.

- When you do a hardware reset, you'll have to run the tiff again. This time there won't be green or red screen, just a blue screen and xmb reboot, since this time there is no need to write to the flash.

The full tutorial awaits after the jump!

Today at the 0x89 development forums, Harleyg have posted some cool concept images of what the PSPTouchME touch screen might look like. He also confirmed that it will use the USB port instead of the serial port. If the touch screen were to use the serial port, an audio jack would have to be present because the serial port wont be active if not.

This would lead to it having no sound, so now the touch screen will use the USB. Don't worry about the occupation of your USB, as seen on the images and written by harleyg himself, there will be a USB plug on the top of the screen (not actually on the screen it self, but you know what I mean, just look at the picture).

The touch screen may become compatible with the new 0x89 XMB Replacement Harleyg and his mighty team is creating. How cool is that?! And homebrew in the future may also become compatible! If not there would be no use.

The full article awaits after the jump!

This is a port of the classic Minesweeper game from Microsoft. It has the following Features:

• Highscore
• Three "Levels"
• Hidden Feature

The Controls are simple and self explaining, to take a ingame Screenshot, press L+R+Start

The game is written in Python for the PSP. As in all Script languages, the source code is included.

This game was made to train my PSP Python knowledge. I would like to thank Olga for motivating me.

Download: [pyMine v1.0.0]

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The article above was created by a user on MyQJ. As such, it may not be accurate and does not reflect the opinions of QJ.NET or its staff.

For those of you who aren't already aware, in June, the US House of Representatives Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection Subcommittee came together to discuss the issue of violent video games. During this conversation, many politicians seemed to have a negative opinion about the way the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) rates video games. Cliff Sterns (R-FL) had then proposed that they correct that system, and initiated the "Truth in Video Game Rating Act" (H.R. 5912). What does this act mean to us? Simply that the Federal Trade Commission would determine the future ratings of the video games we know and love.

Currently, ESRB determines game ratings by viewing a video tape of each game's most offensive content, which is created by the publisher of the game. Sterns believes that the ratings need to incorporate the game's entire content, and there should be rules set up that forbid the publisher from disclosing any information (about the game) from the rating system. His bill would also require the US General Accounting Office and the General Comptroller to research the effectiveness of the bill, and develop alternatives to the current ESRB rating system. One of these alternatives includes a general rating system for all music, movies, and games, and TV.

Now jump ahead to present day...

Yesterday, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) followed up on Stern's bill and sent a similar bill to the Senate. Seems like this is a pretty serious topic. Anyways, the exact text of the bill hasn't been released just yet, but Brownback seems to have the same concepts in mind that Sterns brought up. He said that watching a video tape of edits simply isn't enough, and that his bill would "direct the Federal Trade Commission to require that reviewers consider the full content of a video game before issuing a rating." His thoughts are also shared with Sterns, with the ideas of a possible general rating system.

Don't think this is all going down without a fight though, the Entertainment Software Association has responded with President Douglas Lowenstein telling Sterns that his bill would not succeed, and that people would not be represented by the average American parents.

Since we are the gamers, we should have some input on what the ratings are, or how they work. What do you think? Should we incorporate more than just the basic "Everyone", "Teen", and "Mature" (besides some others)? Perhaps a "Pre-teen", "Mature Teen", or "Adult Only"? Are we ok with the current ratings, but just need to include more detailed research on games before the ratings go up? Tell us what you think!

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The article above was created by a user on MyQJ and received enough Jumps to be automatically posted to PSP Updates. As such, it may not be accurate and does not reflect the opinions of QJ.NET or its staff.

QJ Admin: This post has been removed due to increasing reports of the information being inaccurate. The general consensus is that PSX-P does not write to flash memory or perform any other "hidden actions". Our sincerest apologies to Yoshihiro and any other people/projects that were related to the information that was in the article.

Please note that this post was made at MyQJ - a section of QJ.NET that is open for anyone to write their own articles. When these articles reach a certain number of Jumps, they are automatically transferred here to PSP Updates. This article was not written by QJ.NET staff and did not reflect the opinions of this site.

Please be patient as we try to fine tune our system to allow MyQJ'ers freedom to discuss topics of their choice, but at the same time retain the integrity and accuracy that you expect from PSP Updates and QJ.NET

While we bloggers can differentiate a good site from a bad one, we generally aren't vocal about it. Normal users can rant all day, but when we make a statement, it is counted as an official stand of the parent website. While this is normal, we do feel restricted in a way... We can't warn the people against other "bad" sites because of the sole reason that it would cause nothing but in-fighting in the scene.

But it gets different when some sites start to rip-off other people's great work and modifying it for their own glory. A few hours ago, I got a humble request from Mathieulh, Dark_Alex and harleyg. It was about the fact that a certain site, PS2NFO, was editing the readme files of homebrew releases to remove their names from the credits section. It seems that they even went to the lengths of hex-editing the applications to remove the names of Fanjita, Skylark, psp250 and Mathieulh, all of whom have been hugely responsible to get the PSP homebrew scene where it is today.

That's still not all. We also noticed the fact that the PS2NFO admin started impersonating Dark_Alex in their forums to get more glory. Mathieulh, Dark_Alex and harleyg wanted us to put this statement up on our site. Here's the official statement:

"Dark_AleX never goes to PS2NFO and never will. PS2NFO go as low as impersonating developers to make themselves seem exclusive. They lie to everyone and steal credits. They impersonated Dark_AleX several times despite our warning on Maxconsole. When people post that Dark_AleX is a fake on their forums, they just delete the post and continue to make it look like he is the real one.

Because we fear for the sake of the entire scene due to such behaviour, we have no choice but to warn as many people as possible. They also remove credits from the people they banned such as Mathieulh. When the libtiff helloworld was released, they hex edited the tiff to remove all credits apart from NOPx86. Fanjita, Skylark and psp250's name was removed. We hope they won't repeat such lame acts again and they will leave the PSP scene alone"

Now in case they think of editing their posts after seeing this, we have proof of them doing these malicious acts:

Now while this might be surprising to most of you people, we were not surprised. In fact, Fanjita had this to say in one of his posts in our forums:

"Bleh, standard practise from that site. Low pirate scum, the lot of 'em."

Here's what PS2NFO had to say after news spread that they were impersonating Dark_Alex:

"After it ran it's course for a day, we received unconfirmed reports that it wasn't the real Dark_AleX who actually posted the thread. As a result, we posted the IPs logged from the account and an offer to Contact Us for the real Dark_AleX to (re)claim his account here. Until he chooses to, we have now seized the account and I will personally use it in his absence on our boards. Not much more we can do at this"

Now while I cannot give an official statement regarding this, you guys should realise how we at QJ feel about PS2NFO. Our advice to everyone here: Stop going to that site and make sure to get untampered homebrew from any of the rest of the sites, especially from http://dl.qj.net. And make sure to spread the message to your friends!

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The article above was created by a user on MyQJ and received enough Jumps to be automatically posted to PSP Updates. As such, it may not be accurate and does not reflect the opinions of QJ.NET or its staff.

Love IR Shell? Love the look of Vista?

Well you can have the best of both worlds with Vista Clarity!

This is the full version of the default skin used in IR Shell 2.2. The version used in IR Shell was still incomplete, with some graphical menu selection problems, and incomplete help images. Luckily, PSPHax0r9 has fixed these!

The full release includes:

• All images (including help images) now skinned.
• Menu selection improved
• PSDs for all images!
• Logo.bmp (CAN ONLY BE USED IN 2.2SE, for beta testers)

PSPHax0r9 wants to thank Ahman, Numeror, Wattako, and all IR Shell skinners!

Download: [Vista Clarity - IR Shell Skin]