[Dracain]

You know, it is completely possible to hack into someones pacemaker today, and even kill them through it.  This is a think people can do RIGHT NOW.  While the security has gone up (it is nothing now, to what little there is on cyberware today, and slaving a device makes it even more secure), and there will not be less wireless 50+ years from now, there will be more, and people aren't going to take turn off wireless and lose all the conveniences on the minor chance of coming up against a decker/hacker.  Now, a someone in the military, or a shadowrunner, may turn it off, but the average person isn't going to bother. 

[Medicineman]

What are its supposed benefits?

Bonus Dice for throwing knifes  (these are the only Online Items my Char has)

. what about Deckers/Techies being rare? Why?)

Runner Decker/Technomancer very rare (see Posts above) ,but Megacon Decker ?
Plenty of them

with lots and lots of Dances
Medicineman

[RHat]

. what about Deckers/Techies being rare? Why?)

Runner Decker/Technomancer very rare (see Posts above) ,but Megacon Decker ?
Plenty of them

Plenty of them?  I don't see why.  There's no point in training and equipping a whole bunch of them when one on shift can be sufficient for several facilities - especially given how much of the work is done FOR them by the structure of the Matrix.

[nylanfs]

(also, pardon if I miss a lot of details here but... what about Deckers/Techies being rare? Why?)

Decks are illegal.

Umm what? They are restricted, not forbidden.

Also going with 1%, currently internal medical doctors (general practitioners) are around 1% of the population. Does everyone know and interact with a doctor, that's about the normal amount that the average person interacts with a decker (&/or techno).

[Checkmate]

Cyberware is wirelessly enable for the sake of convenience. However convenient generally isn't safe. The more security conscious(read: paranoid) types like Shadowrunners and CorpSec would generally disable and/or skinlink the vast majority of their important cyberware.

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[martinchaen]

Daen82; as to your comment about having a wifi jammer, I give you this: http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=12790.0

There's a reason my heavily cybered street sam has a rating 4 jammer on him at all times. With it's wireless bonus (which is pretty ironic, if you ask me) of being able to selectively decide who you jam, and a movement speed of 36+++ m/combat turn, you can bet your ass that "Geek the decker!" will be my characters first mantra, followed closely by the more traditional "Geek the mage".

To be slightly more on topic; while WiFi seems like an odd way to go about a lot of things (medkits can heal me better when connected to the Matrix? And what the hell, by being online the hydraulic jacks in my legs help me run faster and jump higher? Anyway...), it's how the designers wrote it. I know that's a poor excuse, but in a world of mesh-networks and constant connectivity, it makes an odd kind of sense to me at least that the corporations would want to make products that require always-on connectivity for updates and "performance reasons".

Let's face it, game companies these days are doing exactly that; don't have a 24/7 internet connectivity? Sorry, you can't play our game (EA, I'm looking at you, bitches!). I don't find it inconceivable that a corp would do the same in the future, especially given that malicious attacks would be rare and, as of 2075, under the constant watchful eye of the GOD (I refuse to call them just GOD, because they are THE Grid Overwatch Divison...).

And while wireless seems like a risk, there are tons of things the enterprising runner can do to protect themselves; buy a top-of-the link commlink, and slave everything to that (hello, Transys Avalon). Then hire a hacker of your own to protect you even further, so that when the opposing hacker tries to mess with your system, you have time to plant 18 rounds from the cybergun in your arm into his head while he is still struggling with your firewall.

Carry a jammer at all times, slaved to your commlink, so that when someone tries to hack your gear you flood the airwaves with noise, conveniently slowing them down while giving you time to find and question/kill them.

Worst case, reboot! If you discover a hacker trying to brick your shit, reboot the device/devices, and turn off wireless to break their connection. Speaking of which; does a hacker suffer dumpshock if he gets disconnected by me turning my commlink off while he's in it?

[Checkmate]

Probably not. You get dumpshock if you're VRed into a device when it's bricked but I would image just shutting it off(unless you like pulled the battery suddenly) would disconnect all of the users before shutting down.

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[DeathStrobe]

Speaking of which; does a hacker suffer dumpshock if he gets disconnected by me turning my commlink off while he's in it?

You don't go into devices anymore. If this was SR4, yes. But In SR5 you just interact with devices in at "astral space" like Matrix. The only place with VR environments are hosts. And it doesn't seem like its possible to turn off hosts.