Originally Posted by
toddrhind
A Queensland jackaroo is overseeing his mob in remote territory when
suddenly a brand-new BMW advances out of a cloud of dust towards him.
The driver, a young man in a designer suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban
sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the jackaroo,
'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your mob,
will you give me a calf?'
The jackaroo looks at the man, obviously not a local, then looks at
his peacefully grazing mob and calmly answers, 'Sure, why not?'
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer,
connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 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 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 jackaroo and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows
and calves.'
'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says the Jackaroo.
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 Jackaroo 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 work for the Australian Government', says the Jackaroo.
'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'
'No guessing required.' answered the jackaroo. '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. You used all kinds of
expensive equipment that clearly somebody else paid for, You tried to
show me how much smarter
than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cattle .. This is a
mob of sheep. Now give me back my dog.