A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California 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, RayBan 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?'

 

Bud 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 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 and finally 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 amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

 

Then the 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 tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog.

 

    在加利福尼亚一个偏远的山区牧场，牛仔巴德正在照看他的牧群。这时，一辆崭新的宝马带着滚滚尘土向他驶来。

    驾车的年轻人，身着布莱奥尼西装、古琦皮鞋、雷朋太阳镜、圣罗兰领带，从车窗探出头问那牛仔：“如果我准确地告诉你你的牛群里有多少母牛、多少牛犊，你肯送我一头牛犊吗？”

    巴德看了看那人，显然是个雅皮士，把目光又落到他正在安静地吃草的牧群，平静地答道：“当然可以，为什么不呢？”

那雅皮士停好车，从车里拿出戴尔笔记本电脑，将电脑连接到Cingular RAZR V3手机，浏览美国宇航局的网页，连接到一个全球定位卫星，找到自己的精确位置，再把参数送到另一个美国宇航局的卫星把所在区域扫描到一张超高清晰度的相片中。然后，年轻人用Adobe Photoshop打开数码图像，把图像送到位于德国汉堡的一个图像处理设备上。几秒钟之后，他就在Palm Pilot掌上电脑上收到了处理好图像和已存储数据的电子邮件。随后，他用黑莓手机发送电子邮件，通过一个开放式数据互连的Excel电子表单链接到一个MS-SQL数据库。数分钟后，就得到了回应。

最后，他用高技术的微型HP激光打印机打印出一份全彩色的、150页厚的报告。他这才转向牛仔说∶ “你总共有1586只母牛和牛犊。”

“对极了。好，我想你可以拿走我一只牛犊了。”巴德说道。

他看着年轻人从那一大群动物中选了一只，并觉得好玩儿地看着他放进自己汽车的行李箱。这时巴德对年轻人说：“嗨，如果我猜得出你是干什么的，你肯归还我的牛犊吗?”

年轻人想了一会儿，然后说∶“好吧，为什么不呢?”

“你是美国政府的国会议员。”巴德说。

“哇!太对了，” 雅皮士说道，“可是你是怎么猜到的呢?”

“不用猜。”牛仔回答说。“你不请自来；你想就一个我从未问过你、我已经知道答案的问题获得报酬；你试图向我炫耀你比我有多聪明；你还对牛一无所知—这是一群羊。现在，把我的狗还回给我。”

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