"If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your
flock, will you give me one?"

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, 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 shepherd and says, "You have
exactly 1586 sheep."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my
sheep." Says the shepherd.

He watches the young man selects one of the animals
and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into
the trunk 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 animal?"

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." answered 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 don't know crap about
my business."

"...Now give me back my dog