CES 2009 Shrinks With Dwindling Economy

nandemoari writes "Not long after we first heard murmurs Microsoft may be ready to lay off as much as 17 per cent of its workforce, the popular Consumer Electronics Show, held every year in Las Vegas, is rumored to be shrinking alongside the global economy. The Consumer Electronics Association, host of the CES, estimates that the numbers of both exhibitors and visitors will be down in 2009. The CEA expects about 130,000 people will attend this year, down 11,000 from last year. And about 2,700 exhibitors are expected to attend, down from 3,000 in 2008."

Comments

Re:Robots!=consumer electronics

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots work fine in a controlled industrial environment where the overall costs jusrtify them, but not in a normal house.

Are you really that fucking short-sighted? You really think that no significant advances in AI might be made in this century? GP rightly called out your ludicrous statement that "Consumer electronics nowadays basically do everything consumers want." You either have no imagination, or you're just trying to defend a stupid post.

Re:boycottt slashdot

[cbiltcliffe]

What the heck is it with these dweebs? It seems like every other story over the past couple of days has got some troll in first post about Gnome, KDE, nerds, Linux, or some other bullshit.

They all work in a dark room with a combination of a shrine to Bill Gates, and a wall full of newspaper clippings and printed stories and pictures from the Internet about RMS, Torvalds, and other OSS VIPs. The entire wall is lit by a single, unshaded 60 watt light bulb, and various articles have scrawled across them in red marker "Die," "Kill" in almost a child's handwriting. A small 15" TV is hooked up to a greasy VHS deck playing reruns of interviews with Pamela Jones. The whole area, whose size is about 25 feet squared, has had the windows boarded up, and most is in shadows, except for the hate wall and the light from the TV. The floors are littered with pizza boxes and Twinkie wrappers, but in the shadows of the corners are various crates and boxes of guns, ammunition, and rockets.

The only other source of light is a small computer monitor, inevitably showing a slashdot page in the latest beta of Internet Explorer 8, running on Vista Ultimate, of course. The keys on the keyboard are worn smooth, due to the incessant pounding they receive from the troll's psychotic postings in the very forum they claim to despise.

The Anonymous Coward post is like a religion to them. They post their vitriol with no chance of being caught, by using various unsecured wireless networks from their high gain dish antenna on the roof. Most of their hardware is paid for by the cash they receive in an envelope on the second Tuesday of the month, slid under their door so they don't have to face the harsh light of day.