From:	mneideng@****.caltech.edu (Mark L. Neidengard)
Subject:	Re: ADMIN: TimeStamps
Date:	Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:46:00 -0700 (PDT)

According to Sticks to Teflon:
>
>Your best decker's computer skill is only 8? To me, for any kind of decker
>who wants to be hot, an 8 is not going to cut it. Thats not much higher
>than a starting decker. Hell, 6 or 7 good runs and they'll have enough
>Karma to buy it (4 or 5 a run for a total or 30). Talk to me when his skill
>is in the low teens. Then I'll agree that a decker is good enough to cut
>the IC to do what you think he already can.

Obviously we have very different ideas about what those skill numbers mean.
A skill of 4 is professional (wage-slave, if you want). Certainly a skill of
5 or 6 makes the character a good candidate for being hired, at least for
the sort of missions a starting character could go on (and at least around
here, those missions can get plenty insane). Skill levels around 10 strike me
as reflecting _true_ mastery of a craft, and anything above 12 I certify as
among the truly best in the world at any one time, if not in history. For
reference, I say that Hawking has Theoretical Physics 15. Whereas I have
it at more like 2. =)
--
/!\/!ark /!\!eidengard, CS Major, VLSI. http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/~mneideng
"Fairy of sleep, controller of illusions" Operator/Jack-of-all-Trades, CACR
"Control the person for my own purpose." "Don't mess with the Dark
Elves!"
-Pirotess, _Record_of_Lodoss_War_ Shadowrunner and Anime Addict