Cowboy Logic
 

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, 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 f! acility 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, "Oka! y, 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."