It's a cliche reportorial trick, but a tested one: When you get to a new city, chat up your friendly cab driver. You always learn a little dirt, get a little flavor. (A fellow reporter once told me the same holds true for strippers -- of course, I wouldn't know. What? Why are you looking at me like that? Don't you believe me?) I've been to Vegas four or five times in the past (this is my first time here for work) and I always learn something new from the cab drivers. Like for example: they absolutely hate CES. Can you blame them? Some 140,000 technophiles flood the city, don't really gamble or drink to excess and leave, I am told, lousy tips. Now they have one more reason to be grumpy: competition. This year they're putting hundreds of additional cabs on the streets during CES (and that other convention). They're also having drivers work shifts of up to 12 hours, which doesn't seem entirely safe. I haven't been able to hammer down a specific number, but one cab driver told me there would be 800 additional taxis; another cabbie told me 500. These guys would make lousy fact checkers. Still, I was curious enough to Google around a bit and found the Las Vegas taxi driver blog, which has this fairly hilarious post about the CES demanding that the taxicab authority put 300 more cars into circulation. Key quote:

"CES is basically a show where juvenile geek’s from all the Globalist hot spots gather in Las Vegas to look at the latest gizmos nobody needs but are convinced they cannot live without.

Don’t expect any earth changing technology to flow from this latest GeekFest. Back in the late 1990’s when the Global Elite figured out the Internet truly could threaten their grip on World Dominance, they have worked mightily to insure the bandwidth never showed up which could have truly diversified Power to all Peoples of the World."

OK, a little batty. Still. Whether there are 300, 500 or 800 more cabs on the road this week is immaterial. It all boils down to one thing for my taxi-driving friends in this fairly astute and poetic conclusion:
 
"So in a nutshell CES and the Taxi Business are similar. Too many apps--too many cabs, and far too few roads and access points to make proper use of."