2uteman

A cowboy was herding his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly
a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban
sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the
cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have
in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy 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 AT&T cell phone and surfs to a NASA page on the
Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system 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 a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected
Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulas. He uploads
all of this data via an 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 and finally turns to the
cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,"
says the cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the
animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the
trunk of his car.

Then the cowboy 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 consultant." says the cowboy. "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; and you
don't know anything about my business."

"Now give me back my DOG."