Not quite, let me explain.

Whenever you test your connection to something, whether it be a website, or a game, you are pinging it.

Pinging is just sending information to the server and back to you, calculates how many milliseconds it takes, and that is your connection.

Ping is actually a handy tool. Hit start button, Run, type in this:

ping "www.whatever.whatever"

This will tell you how fast/slow you are getting and sending to data to/from this site. It also works with IP addresses.

Now, in the case of what GTA is doing, he is doing the same thing, but, the catch is that he is doing it continuously, over and over, 10000 times.

This severely slows down the users connection, and half the time will crash the server he is on.