Anyone though of using chips to replicate 'exactly' certain skills. So that each McDonalds hamburger can be exactly the same, or the new janitor can clean the floor 'just so'? If you offer your fast food employees a loan to get a chipjack and then slot them with 'McDonalds burger making: 3' then you don't need to train them or anything... Also, the company can be sure you are not using them as a stepping stone to bigger and better things, when you quit the job all your skills stay with the job...
For relatively simple stuff it sounds like a possible solution.

Sounds like Baseball in 2060 (Wolf and Raven).

It's possible, but damn -- flipping burgers isn't that complicated and certainly not worth the effort and cost of implanting your burger jockies with chipjacks at a cost of how much?

Now, I can see entire think-tanks of vegetables wired with chipjacks and knowledge skills: mathematics, physics and so on.

-Siege

i can't. an S-K would be much cheaper.

Yes, but the human imagination can spawn academic leaps that a computer lacks.

Or maybe I'm just being perverse.

-Siege

Man to computer: "Can you supply a sample of a non-computable problem?"

Computer: "Damn you, James T Kirk!"

or maybe you are looking for:
and AC said "LET THERE BE LIGHT."
and there was light.

In my games, dockworkers at the Port of Tacoma can go for the 'Lifer' package. Agree to an indentured servant contract, and the Metroplex will provide you with a chipjack and a basic (level 3) set of skillwires. Rather than train you to use the different types of equiptment (hovercrafts, powerboats, rotorcraft), they just give you a cluster chip with the skills already burned in. One day, they need a tug pilot; the next, they need someone to shuttle a hovercraft over to Federated Boeing. If you're unloading cargo for a foreign ship and crew, they'll slot you an appropriate linguasoft to make things go smoothly. Chipjacks also work great for slotting ship and crew manifests, as well as customs procedures and hazardous material protocols. Every chip issued to you is logged, with missing chips being deducted directly from your paycheck.
Aggressive young turks often accept the Lifer package, seeing it as a fast-path to a foreman or even management job.

And you thought your boss didn't know what he was doing...

This maybe a little off topic, but if you are using chip for a skill for a long time, would be possible for the person to start to gain the ability to learn that skill? I mean if you drive a tug boat for months wouldn't you start to learn it with out the chip? Or after readign enough forieng lauges with the chips help wouldn't you start to learn a little about the launguage, I am not saying you'll become fluent, but you can recognize words with out the chip? I am not sure I haven't read the chipjack/skillwire rules in a long time.

Hi,
it would make sense, but I doubt it would work, because skillsofts are described as giving machine-like skill. You can speak a language, but you cannot write poetry in it or become in another way creative in it.
If I recall correctly, in the second Neuromancer novel, a character uses a Spanish linguasoft. When he removes that chip, every knowledge of the language is erased and it's like he had never spoken a word of Spanish before.
While this is not Shadowrun, I suppose the Shadowrun linguasofts are based on the Gibson chips so they would work the same.

tbd

A machine skill exists only on the chip -- your body has no grey matter available to retain the information as the character performs the action.

I would imagine it would be a massively frustrating feeling to try and "Remember" a ghost skill a character used on a chip.

-Siege

The thing I see is you are watching yourself do the thing it is you are doing, then later trying to imitate it. The skill may never touch your brain, but you are watching it happen. Many people learn things by watching someone else do it, then try to repeat it. The chip doesn't shut your brain down, it is just running your body for the moments you need the skill, you are still "awake" to see it happen. Just a theory. Just hinking about it, I can see active chips doing that, but I'll concede that anything knowledge based will not happen.

Eh, it doesn't really hold for me.

By watching someone shoot a gun, you might be able to puzzle out how to do it, so other people watching could pick up some pointers, but the person with chip would have to video him or herself to garner this secondary benefit.

-Siege

It was just a thought, not trying to convince you. I am not even convinced myself.

What if companies started P-Fixing there employees, no more company theft, no more harrassment, non of the junk that plagues corporations today. Also you would have nice courtious sales staff that will help a customer anyway they can. And they'll be happy. I can't stand a long hard day of work, but if I go to work, slot my 8 hour chip, them I wake up walking out to my car to go home, man that wasn't a bad of work at all. Never get pissed at haveing to go to work.

Personafix chips are quite illegal (they're BTLs), so that'd require either a coverup or some new legislation.

Ok scratch the the helpfull clerk, but an office full of nice friendly busy little bees would be great in extra-territorial sites.

The real question is... how productive and creative would a p-fixed employee be compared to the real deal?

Interesting idea -- it depends on how much personal initiative the job requires, I suppose.

Of course, what's illegal in one area may not be so illegal in another --peyote being a prime example.

-Siege

A lot of office jobs do not require creativity at all most of the stuff is constent repetition, like filling out forms or waht ever. So as long as the P-Fix doesn't mess with their ability to do work a basic trained monkey can do. The problems corps have is that this stuff is mind numbing so you have peolpe not wanting to come to work or harrasing their co-workers it costs corportion lots of money to repair these things. Just watch the movie Office Space and you'll see what I mean. Then imagine an office full of quiet drones doing their jobs at what could be top effeciency no idle chat at the water cooler, no playing grab ass with the secretaries, just give them 8 hour P-Fixes that way they come in slot the chip put in their 8 hours a day then they go home not knowing waht happened, they wouldn't try to call out sick as much, besides if they can't remeber what they read that day it will be harder for a runner to get info from them like what does the inside of the building look like or what ever. I think it would need a whole new generation of P-Fix maybe a Work-Fix.

Burger-flippers make, what, ten bucks an hour, if they're lucky? But even a rating one skillwires set will set you back 500 bucks, not including any MP, or the chipjack, or surgery costs, or the hospital bill to recover from the invasive surgery. You'd still be a poor burger flipper, but this way you've wasted 50 hours work on something that will probably just hold you back in the skill department. Maybe for jobs where a huge amount of money will be spent on training individuals, or the type of work involves operating delicate, expensive and/or important machinery, which the company cannot afford to have damaged just so some newbie can learn the ropes, or if the training cannot be simulated, would a set of high-end skillwires be cost beneficial.

i can see skillwire use as taking the place of training time, and/or as an IC reason for spending karma on a skill.

about the vegetable/skillwire hookup--how much creative thought is a vegetable going to be doing?

Instead of skillwires to justify karma which, by canon description, is incapable of such an action, just use virtual trainers for the desired result.

However, while rank-and-file worker drones probably won't be outfitted with skillwires and chips (unless they can streamline the procedure to make it fast, effecient and cheap -- although, if cooking is indeed a Knowledge skill, datajack + knowsoft link + chip has the desired affect for $1,500 + surgery cost).

However, middle-level drones that require a certain amount of skill -- pilots, drivers and even internal maintenance drones -- mechanics, electricians and so on could forseeably get mass-produced chips to ensure a uniform compatability in hardware, technology and so on.

The chips would be cheap enough for Mitsu (for example) to mass-produce, certainly to outfit the necessary tradespeople.

-Siege

And if your Mcjob is a knowledge skill then you only need a chipjack to do it. If you can get by with KS: Mcjob then then a subsidized loan for the ~1k chipjack might not be too bad.

What kind of loser would get a job flipping burgers without planning to ditch it for a better job first chance he gets?

a dedicated loser. besides, once he's got his chipjack, he can get jobs at BK, Subway, Pizza Hut... he's got a future, baby!

Yeah, my job is filled with idiots that think "one day I'll be a manager!" Those kinds of losers are a dime a dozen.

And getting a low interest loan on a chipjack helps make the Mcjob more attractive. It also give your sam something to do in the downtime. Just slot "random Mcjob:3" and get your 1K a month or so. $-)

Think of it as the equivalent of having to have a car, steel-toed boots, and uniform at your own expense before even being considered for a baseline warehouse job. Oh, the company will provide the last two out of three if you don't have them and are willing to get them, and the steel-toed boots are actually transferable across jobs (rather like the chip/datajack), but you still have to pay for them out of your own money.

Take the car out of the equation, and the initial expense of even being considered for the job becomes approximately identical.

Dude, how would you feel watching your Sam flipping burgers at his day McJob?

I think we added a new one for "Things you never want to here on a Shadowrun:"

Player 1: "Hey buddy, want fries with that?"

Player 2: "Which chip did you slot?!"

Player 3: "Oh....frag."

-Siege

From Shadowtech shadowtalk (p.48):

Ya know, as long as I wasn't depending on that Gunnery soft, I'm sure it would be amazingly funny to watch.

-Siege