A story with a message

A shepherd was herding his flock 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 Prada suit, Gucci shoes, Dior sunglasses and D+G
tie, leans out the window and asks the shepherd: “If I tell you
exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you let me take
one home for my dinner?”

The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his
peacefully grazing flock 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, 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 formulae.

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-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturised HP
LaserJet printer, turns to the shepherd and says: “You have exactly
1,586 sheep”.

“That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep,” says the
shepherd.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on
amused as the young man stuffs it into the boot of his car. Then the
shepherd says to the young man: “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what
your business is, will you give me back my sheep?”

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says: “Okay, why
not?”.
“You’re a consultant,” says the shepherd.
“Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie. “But how did you guess that?”
“No guessing required,” answers the shepherd. “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 know nothing about
my business.

“Now give me back my dog.”

Thanks to oily Oli, the drunk Scotsman in dual thongs for this little gem. Check out his photgraphy. Great stuff.