The man better known as the father of China’s Great Firewall defended his invention which blocks out hundreds of thousands of foreign websites and admitted to owning software to evade the censorship he helped create.

In a rare English-language newspaper interview published Friday, Fang Binxing, president of the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told the state-owned Global Times that he owned six so-called virtual private networks, or VPNs, to scale the firewall and determine what was and wasn’t accessible in China.

“I have six VPNs on my home computer," Fang, 50, told the newspaper. "But I only try them to test which side wins: the GFW or the VPN.”

He added, “I'm not interested in reading messy information like some of that anti-government stuff.”

Fang, who could not be reached for comment Friday by the Times, said the filtering technology was operational five years before it came online in 2003 and likened the system to traffic control that constantly required upgrading.

As everyone now knows, no relationship is truly official until it is announced on Facebook.

Given that unavoidable truth, many previously unannounced couples must be breathing a sigh of relief: On Thursday Facebook announced it has enabled its users to choose "civil unions" and "domestic partnerships" as relationship options. 

The move was lauded by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which said that the new options would only be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the UK and France. The group said it was one among several advocacy organizations that asked Facebook to make the change.

“Today, Facebook sent a clear message in support of gay and lesbian couples to users across the globe,” said GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios in a statement on the group's website. “By acknowledging the relationships of countless loving and committed same-sex couples in the U.S. and abroad, Facebook has set a new standard of inclusion for social media."

RELATED:

Official list of attendees at Obama tech meeting: CEOs of Twitter, Netflix, Oracle, Yahoo, others

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg says no Facebook-branded phone, but dozens with Facebook integration

Facebook moving headquarters from Palo Alto to former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park

-- David Sarno

Fox News commentator Glenn Beck has put Google Inc. in his rhetorical cross hairs.

The search giant is, of course, the employer of Wael Ghonim, the marketing executive who emerged as a figurehead of the recent political uprising in Egypt, at one point saying he was "ready to die" for the cause of freedom. Google has offered Ghonim its support. But support was not as immediately forthcoming from Beck.

"I'm really not sure I want my search engine involved in government overthrows," he said on his show on Wednesday. "I'm not afraid that Google is reading my e-mail or tapping your phone lines or stealing Grandma's recipes -- that kind of paranoia is reserved for the left during the Bush administration with Microsoft."

"What I'm starting to look at is Google as a whole -- you know they said 'Don't be evil?'  Well what does that mean exactly?  What are their motivations? Who are they working with? What are they doing on an everyday basis? Where do they give all of their money? 

"I'm not leading any boycott," Beck continued. "I hate boycotts: you do with your time, your money, and your information what you want.  For me personally, I'm not feeling real comfortable about the current direction of Google, the more I find out."

Among Beck's criticisms is that Google is working closely with several levels of government, including  the NSA, law enforcement, and the National Geospatial Intelligence agency.  Beck also pointed to ties between Google and what he called liberal entities, including media watchdog Free Press, George Soros' Open Society Foundation and others.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Here's the show's transcript.

RELATED:

Google exec Wael Ghonim's first interview out of Egyptian government custody

Wael Ghonim, freed Google exec in Egypt, back in protests, back on Twitter

-- David Sarno

Apple Inc., in building a system that allows users to subscribe to newspapers, magazines and other kinds of recurring media, has added a pop-up box that lets readers decide if they want to share their personal data with publishers.

The option is important to the publishing industry, which relies on data about its subscribers to lure advertisers and the marketing dollars they bring with them. Before Apple added the subscription mechanism to its iTunes system, the company shared no user data with publishers -- a situation that drew complaints from the media industry.

The box Apple has added, pictured above during the sign-up process for the Daily online news and entertainment outlet, gives users the option to share data -- or not -- before the subscription begins. This is known as an opt-in choice, as opposed to the generally more business-friendly opt-out, where users are automatically enrolled in services and must actively choose to leave to prevent their information from being shared.

Apple's decision to allow users to offer their information to marketers is in one sense a concession -- publishers will now be able to get some subscriber information instead of none. But observers say it is unlikely to appease the publishing industry for a simple reason: Many users may see no advantage in sharing their personal data with marketers.

Here's the official list of attendees of Thursday evening's meeting of technology industry chiefs with President Obama in San Francisco. It includes many of Silicon Valley's biggest names.

• John Doerr, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Carol Bartz, president and CEO, Yahoo!
• John Chambers, CEO and chairman, Cisco Systems
• Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
• Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO, Oracle
• Reed Hastings, CEO, NetFlix
• John Hennessy, president, Stanford University
• Steve Jobs, chairman and CEO, Apple
• Art Levinson, chairman and former CEO, Genentech
• Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google
• Steve Westly, managing partner and founder, Westly Group
• Mark Zuckerberg, founder, president and CEO, Facebook

From a description of the meeting by a White House official:

The meeting is a part of our ongoing dialogue with the business community on how we can work together to win the future, strengthen our economy, support entrepreneurship, increasing our exports, and get the American people back to work. The President and the business leaders will discuss our shared goal of promoting American innovation, and discuss his commitment to new investments in research and development, education and clean energy."

RELATED:

Apple's Steve Jobs scheduled to meet with Obama on Thursday

Steve Jobs reportedly spotted at Apple headquarters 'looking good'

Apple's Steve Jobs a little nervous before early TV appearance [Video]

-- David Sarno [follow]

Everyone in Silicon Valley is waiting for Google to unveil its big strategy to counteract the rising influence of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which are siphoning traffic and advertising dollars from search engines.

Disclaimer: This isn't it. But Thursday's announcement of new search features is part of a grander scheme to add a social layer to Google products.

Your friends' activity on Flickr, Quora, Twitter, YouTube and elsewhere on the Web will begin to pop up in search results within the next week, Google said Thursday. That activity will also influence how pages rank in search results.

"Relevance isn't just about pages — it's also about relationships," Mike Cassidy, a Google product management director, and Matthew Kulick, a product manager, wrote in a blog post.

Google has had what it calls "social search" since October 2009.  But this tweak to social search will bring those results up from the bottom of the page and make it easier for you to find an article shared by a friend on Twitter or a question answered by a friend on Quora that is related to your search, for example.

As far as relationships go, the one between Google and Facebook could use some work. You will be able to find links to posts from friends all over the Web,  but not from Facebook. Google executives have complained in the past about how Facebook has made it difficult for Google to import information from its service. Bing late last year added "Facebook Liked Results," allowing you to search Bing to see what your friends "liked" on Facebook in response to a search.

You can also now privately link your social networking accounts to your Google profile. Before those links were public, which may have discouraged some users. You will see search results from those networks if you are logged into your Google account.

Google has hired prominent entrepreneurs versed in social networking such as PayPal and Slide founder Max Levchin to help accelerate its efforts to make headway in social networking. Cassidy sold his company, an online travel guide called Ruba, to Google in May.

RELATED:

Google buys Angstro, hires co-founder to build social networking service

Slide's Levchin takes lead role in Google's social efforts

-- Jessica Guynn

Philipp Humm, the new CEO of T-Mobile USA, has come from sister company T-Mobile Germany to try to boost the carrier's fortunes in the U.S.  Humm is visiting dozens of cities around the nation, holding grassroots town halls with employees to get a sense of where they feel the company should be heading.

Humm sat down with The Times recently to talk up his plans to make smart phones affordable, to get everyone a tablet, and how he'll face off against his bigger rivals in Verizon and AT&T.  He also has a few words about the iPhone (which T-Mobile doesn't yet have) and Apple's Steve Jobs. 

What is one of the more important lessons you learned from operating in the European market?

The best way of being a good challenger is by having played defense for a while.  Now you know how the defenders play the challenger game.  Back at the time in Germany we had very good challengers attacking us.  Looking at how other people attacked you is a very good way to determine how you’ll make your next attack.

Updated, 12:14 p.m.

Apple's Steve Jobs is scheduled to attend a meeting with President Obama on Thursday along with chief executives from Google Inc. and Facebook, the White House has confirmed.

The news came as speculation about Jobs' health has intensified following whispers about a series of unpublished tabloid photos showing the Apple co-founder leaving the Stanford Cancer Center in apparently frail condition.  Gizmodo published one of the photos, taken by the National Enquirer for an upcoming issue, Wednesday night.

Jobs, who began his current medical leave in January, is scheduled to be joined at the meeting by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Google chief Eric Schmidt, and a dozen other leaders in the technology sector. Obama is in California to promote his plans to boost education spending and discuss technology and employment.

"The President and the business leaders will discuss our shared goal of promoting American innovation, and discuss his commitment to new investments in research and development, education and clean energy," a statement from the White House said. 

The reports did not specify where the meeting will take place or if any part of it will be visible to the press or the public.

Apple's stock has dropped 1.6% in early trading Thursday, down to $357.25.

Updated to reflect confirmation of Jobs on attendance list, as well as planned presence of other technology leaders.

RELATED:

 Steve Jobs reportedly spotted at Apple headquarters 'looking good'

Apple's Steve Jobs a little nervous before early TV appearance [Video]

Apple sent COO Tim Cook to China after Foxconn suicides last year

-- David Sarno

Photo: President Obama speaks at Recreation Hall on the Penn State campus on Feb. 3, 2011.  Credit: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press

The machine has won.

Watson defeated the two biggest "Jeopardy" winners of all time: Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

The IBM computer finished the final round of competition on Wednesday night with $77,147 in winnings over Jennings' $24,000 and Rutter's $21,600.

Jennings holds the record for number of consecutive Jeopardy matches won, with 74. Rutter has won more money than anyone else on Jeopardy.

The two men competed against each other in a 2005 tournament that resulted in a Rutter victory.

Since Watson won, IBM is awarded $1 million -- all of it going to charities World Vision (an anti-poverty group) and World Community Grid (which builds computer grids to address social issues such as water shortages).

Jennings, who won a $300,000 prize for second place, and Rutter, who was awarded $200,000, will each donate half their winnings to charities of their choosing.

The three-episode showdown, which began Monday, was filled with minutes of featurettes in which IBM engineers spoke about how they built Watson and how its question-answering technology could be tailored to its enterprise clients such as hospitals, transportation departments, help desks and law firms.

Academics have applauded IBM as having created a potentially breakthrough system to analyze unstructured data. And some readers, who left their comments on previous Technology Blog posts this week, complained about the three-day run, calling it essentially an infomercial for IBM.

Watson isn't the first IBM computer to defeat a human in competition. In 1997, the chess-playing IBM computer called Deep Blue beat champion Garry Kasparov.

Watson entered Wednesday night's finale with a $20,000 lead over Rutter and Jennings far behind, making Jennings' comeback for second place a bit of a surprise given that he was in last place during the first two episodes.

On Tuesday, Watson blew a Final Jeopardy question submitting "Toronto?????" in response to "Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle." The correct answer was "What is Chicago?"

But on Wednesday night, Watson got the Final Jeopardy question right -- along with Jennings and Rutter.

Each of the three submitted "Who is Bram Stoker?" to the prod of "William Wilkinson’s 'An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia' inspired this author’s most famous novel."

Jennings, on his video screen below the words "Who is Stoker?" wrote “I for one welcome our new computer overlords."

During the credits, Jennings jokingly thrust his hands at the computer monitor that represented Watson in the competition as if to strangle a person by the neck.

RELATED:

After 'Jeopardy,' IBM's Watson will be followed by Racr, but how about Skynet?

IBM's Watson on 'Jeopardy': Computer takes big lead over humans in Round 2

IBM's Watson on 'Jeopardy': Round 1 ends in a tie

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Ken Jennings, left, and Brad Rutter, right, pose after the episode of "Jeopardy!" that aired Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2011, when Watson, the IBM computer, beat the veteran champs with a total of $77, 147 over two exhibition matches. Credit: AP Photo/Jeopardy Productions Inc.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in an interview that aired Wednesday: "We are not for sale."

He dismissed rumors that the company was in "low-level" takeover discussions with Google and Facebook that would fetch $10 billion for the popular social networking service. In a lighthearted moment, he questioned what "low-level" talks actually are. 

"We don't have a shingle out on our front that says 'Twitter: For sale.' We're not for sale and we haven't been. We're very, very interested in building an independent company."

That echoed the message of Twitter's Chief Executive Dick Costolo who in interviews with the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers has pledged to keep Twitter independent.

Such speculation has swirled around Twitter for years. On Monday, Costolo denied the rumor that Twitter was in talks with Google after a keynote presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. He did not answer a question about Facebook.

Stone also said: "We're not valued at $10 billion. That's just what people are writing in the newspapers."

Twitter was valued at $3.7 billion in a $200 million round of funding in December.

RELATED:

Twitter's Dick Costolo denies talks with Google, won't talk about Facebook

Andreessen Horowitz invests $80 million in Twitter, whose private stock is hotter than ever

Twitter tries to turn 140 characters into money

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Twitter founders Biz Stone, left, and Evan Williams at the company's San Francisco headquarters. Credit: Jeff Chiu / Associated Press

If you enjoyed listening to the rock stylings of Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" while F-14 fighter jets zipped through the air during "Top Gun," you might like this.

Century City-based Northrop Grumman Corp. posted a music video of the first flight of its bat-winged robotic jet, dubbed the X-47B. Yes, that's right, a music video -- chock-full of jump cuts and guitar licks.

The flight, which took place earlier this month at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, was a significant milestone for the program. In the 29-minute test flight, the drone climbed to 5,000 feet.

The X-47B is being developed to take off from an aircraft carrier, drop a bomb on an enemy target and then land back on a carrier, controlled entirely by a computer. It's a big step up in technology because current combat drones, such as the Predator and Reaper, are controlled remotely by a human pilot.

But it's still years down the line before the X-47B will be carrier ready. In the meantime, we have the video.

RELATED:

Northrop's X-47B robotic jet makes first flight from Edwards Air Force Base

New generation of unmanned spy planes is being tested

Nation's first drone test pilot trainee has the right-click stuff

-- W.J. Hennigan