Hottest Silverlake gossip picked up by our US associate Technology News of America is that that communications line to the new machines that we highlighted in CI No 915 may be not only for IBM engineers to troubleshoot the machines remotely, but also for downloading all the system software: TNA hears that all IBM software for the machine may be available only by wire and not on tape, which means that users will have to put IBM on the alert every time they install – say – a plug-compatible disk drive so that the operating system can be reconfigured for the new drive, and Big Mother really will be watching you.