The two bits of news below make me believe that TechCrunch are stupid, and some Xbox 360 gamers are sad, aggressive whores. I guess I finally woke up ;)

Xbox Live Gamers Using DDoS Attacking For Revenge

This story is insane - a team of hackers have apparently started a service in which you pay money to start a denial of service attack upon another gamer's IP address. (For those who aren't familiar with DDoS attacks - it's a method used to bring down a server or a collection of servers by bombarding them with requests until they refuse incoming connections.)

DDoS attacking is a familiar threat amongst large websites, but to take this type of attack and put it easily in the hands of a novice gamer - then you know there's a big problem.

I think Microsoft's response to the issue was justified, "This problem is not related to the Xbox Live service, but to the player's internet connection" [src]. In my opinion it brings the gaming world into the real world - if the user wants to escape from the gaming world and do something else online their service may be interrupted - for most probably inexplicably. Microsoft can't do much about it, and the only solution would be to grab a new IP address from your ISP, or wait for the bombardment to stop.

It seems pointless to me anyway, because the chances are the recipient of the attacks will probably not understand why their network hardware is screwing up, so they don't know it's an attack in the first place - let alone that the easy-to-anger dumbass who they pissed off on Xbox live initiated them.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/02/microsoft-responds-to-xbox-live-denial-of-service-attack.ars

TechCrunch Badmouthing Last•fm

TechCrunch published a bullshit article accusing last.fm of giving their user's listening data to the RIAA, apparently due to the early leak of U2's latest album to see how many people had scrobbled tracks from the new album.

TechCrunch, as it turned out, were talking bullshit. Since then Last.fm denied the allegations on the forums, their blog, and it turns out even the RIAA didn't even know where the rumor came from.

I've always trusted last.fm with my personal and listening data, and always will do as they are a transparent company powered by CBS Interactive. (Even though I don't give a flying shit about my listening data, and last.fm seem to have a ball pit in their London offices...)