Is the Internet boring? Well, generally speaking, duh. Except, of course, when blogging luminaries get into a scrap over whether it is. Billionaire entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban started things a month ago when, in an offhand sentence, he declared the Internet "dead as a growth platform" because of a stagnation in the speed of home broadband connections. He reiterated his comments to Portfolio.com, and then repeated them on his blog. Say something often enough, and people start to notice. People like Web 2.0 venture capitalist Fred Wilson. A classic blogfight — observing the three rules of the genre — ensued.

Seems that the execs at PodTech weren't so pleased with TechCrunch's story today, and called an all-hands meeting to state to employees that, as Robert Scoble reveals on Twitter, "TechCrunch got a lot of things wrong". TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington reacts swiftly, telling Scoble that any inaccuracies came from PodTech CEO John Furrier and then scolds the prolific blogger: "It's bullshit to call this out publicly. I assume the off-record conversation is now fair game for TechCrunch.". And all of this is in time for tonight's TechCrunch9 party at August Capital, which Scoble is expected to attend UPDATE: Arrington has responded on his TechCrunch blog, in a post delightfully titled "Dear PodTech, I'm Not Your VP Marketing."

French blogger claims that news aggregation site Techmeme must be run by Microsoft after seeing today's top story. Founder Gabe Rivera responds, sets the record straight. "Dude, you clearly haven't figured out yet that Dick Cheney himself controls Techmeme."