A joke from the dales

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 Savile Row suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses, and YSL tie,
leans out the window and asks the shepherd, "If I tell you exactly how many
sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looks at the man, 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 Nokia phone. He 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 Bluetooth and, after a few minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 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 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, 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. You answer a question I never asked; and you don't know
anything about my business."

"Now give me back my dog."