Bud the Cowboy

                  Bud the Cowboy

                  A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote
mountainous pasture in Montana when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward
him out of a cloud of dust.

                  The driver, a young man in a Brioni® suit, Gucci® shoes,
RayBan® sunglasses and YSL® tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy,
"If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will
you give me a calf?"

                  Bud looks at the man, who obviously is 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 Cingular RAZR V3® cell phone, and surfs to a
NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite 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 an
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, turns to the cowboy and says,
"You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."


                  "That 's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my
calves," says Bud.

                  He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks
on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

                  Then Bud 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 're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says Bud.



                  "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. You used millions of dollars worth
of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don
't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for
that matter. This is a herd of sheep.”


                  “Now give me back my dog.”


                  AND THAT FOLKS IS WHAT THE PROBLEM IS ALL ABOUT