*** A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote
mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced
*** toward him out of a cloud of* dust.
*** The* driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan
sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy,
*** "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your
herd, Will you give me a calf?"
*** Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his
peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"
*** The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer,
connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA
*** page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get
an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA
*** satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.
***********
*** The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop
and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.
***********
*** Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the
image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an
*** MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with
email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a* response.
***********
*** Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his
hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says,
*** "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."
***********
*** "That's right.* Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,"
says Bud.
***********
*** He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on
with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.*
***********
*** Then Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly
what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"
***********
*** The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay,
why not?"
***********
*** "You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says Bud.
***********
*** "Wow!* That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess
that?"*
***********
*** "No guessing required." answered the cowboy.* "You showed up
here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer
***
*** I already knew, to a question I never asked.* You used millions
of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter
*** than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working
people make a living - or about cows, for that matter.
**
*** This is a herd of sheep.* ...
***********
*** Now give me back my dog.
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