Disabling trackback and Update Services

As I have been receiving tons of trackback spam, I decided to disable trackback. My problem is not only about deleting spam through TB validator and saving outbound bandwidth, but first of all my priority is not allowing spammers to access my blog, because when they try to trackback my posts, my stats system records it as visits, so I get fake statistics.
Anyhow, by following suggestions I read in this forum, I took the followings actions:
a) under ‘Options’, ‘Discussions’, I unchecked:
– Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)
– Allow people to post comments on the article
b) in order to disable trackback also for old posts, in PhpMyadmin I used this query:
Update wp_posts set ping_status=”closed”
c) for the new posts I am going to write, I uncheck ‘allow comments’ and ‘allow pings’

Now, related to c) I have a silly question: after unchecking ‘allow pings’, will ‘Update Services’ continue to work properly ? (I mean, unchecking ‘allow pings’ will affect ‘Update Services’ in ‘Writing Options’ ?)
If yes, is there any other option to disable trackback (deleting wp-trackback.php file etc…).

And finally, disabling trackback will help me not allowing spammers to access my pages and so to get real statistics ?

Thanks