"Prince Harry has been on a private holiday before he resumes his military duties, " said a palace official, declining to be named in line with protocol.

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Similarly, Facebook and Twitter send login credentials over a secure line and then revert to an unsecure protocol. (Users of those social networks can add an "s" after "http" to force the systems to encrypt their browsing.) Social networking sites are where people increasingly conduct private conversations, whether through Facebook's Messages or Twitter's Direct Message feature.

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It's palm-sized with a single blue LED light indicating a connection, but honestly you don't ever need to look at it: it doesn't need line-of-sight to your handset because it uses a wireless protocol called WiFi Display, which means you can happily leave it dangling out of the way behind your TV.

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With bulked-up networks, they have poached millions of phone companies' subscribers with cheap voice-over-Internet Protocol plans and sell faster Internet lines than the telcos' digital subscriber line services.

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Morgan Stanley (nyse: MWD - news - people ) predicted earlier this month that line losses could hit 5% by year's end, as voice-over-Internet Protocol technologies take off.

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In 2001 Linux pranksters raced pigeons against a 40-gigabytes-per-second fiber line to test a concept a puckish American scientist first coined a decade earlier:CPIP--Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol.

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Keita descends from a noble line in Mali, and when he became a singer in the late '60s it was a serious violation of protocol in his traditional society.

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