Last 10 entries
Have you read all of these posts?
Go on, you love it:
- 00:54 on 25 Dec by Carly
Happy Christmas!!! 0
- 09:26 on 02 Nov by Neo
Shopping at Office (The shoe shop in Drake Circus) 4 - 14:22 on 04 Oct by Carly
What we would have looked like in the 70's! 4 - 21:12 on 29 Sep by Mark
Five Questions I Constantly Ask Which I'm Not Sure I'll Ever Know The Answers To 14 - 14:34 on 24 Sep by Kate
I wanted a pet kitten... 6 - 19:45 on 17 Sep by Mark
One Sentence(ish) Album Reviews 4 5 - 13:00 on 09 Sep by Mark
In The News 17 - 13:13 on 19 Aug by Mark
New Fantasticos Web Site 9 - 16:03 on 08 Aug by Neo
Kelp! I need some body Kelp!! 5 - 14:34 on 14 Jul by Ol
Harmless fun.... 4
Want more? Go to the archive »
Links
-
Listen To Yourself
Another classic from XKCD. (by Mark) -
I Haven't Lived A Perfect Life
But there's one thing of which I'm proud... (by Mark) -
The Rut
Occasional toons. (by Mark) -
The Onion Sunday Magazine
Excellent. (by Mark) -
GTA IV vs Real Life
A photo comparison of GTA IV's Liberty City and the real New York. (by Bill)
A Business Parable Of Sorts
By Mark on Saturday 9 December 2006 at 18:13
A shepherd is herding his flock in a remote pasture, when a brand-new BMW pulls up in a cloud of dust. The driver, a young man in an Armani suit, leans out the window and asks the shepherd: “If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you let me have one?”
The shepherd looks at the man, looks at his peacefully grazing flock, and calmly answers: “Sure. Why not?”
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his laptop computer, connects it to his mobile phone, 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 takes an ultra-high-resolution photo of the field.
He 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, turns to the shepherd and says: “You have exactly 1586 sheep.”
“That’s right!” says the shepherd. “Well, I guess you can take one.”
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 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, you're on.”
“You're a consultant.” says the shepherd.
“Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess?”
“Well,” said 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 know fuck all about my business. Now let my dog out of your boot.”
Comments are now closed for this entry.
8 comments:
On Saturday 9 December 2006 at 23:20, Toria (katies sister) said:
I don't know how to let you know things other than via a comment, after a joke I don't entirely get but just thought I'd let you guys know because you introduced me to loads of cool links - 'fainting goats' etc. This page, if you can access it... is unbelievably cool! You work with computers - how do they do it??? x
http://www.media.ebaumsworld.com/supercoolpic.swf
On Sunday 10 December 2006 at 03:31, carly said:
whats a consultant? is it like a sutan? if not i don't get it. In fact I don't get it anyway! It was a nice story as i loved the sheep! Was it a joke or a true story?
On Sunday 10 December 2006 at 14:31, Keely said:
After a recent, slightly nasty experience i would like to warn everyone not to look at Toria's link if you are hung over or feeling sick in any way! Urrrgggh!
On Monday 11 December 2006 at 22:55, Dorri said:
Ha ha ha ha ha h h h ha it goes on and on and on and on ... and on .... . . .. . . . and .. . .a . . . on . on on on ........ ! ?? ! Arrgh please make it stop, I wish I didn't take these mushrooooms and look at the picture that goes on and and on.... Ha ha ha ha hhha h h ha it goes on and on and on ......
On Tuesday 12 December 2006 at 00:46, carly said:
I thought it was pretty clever. I did get a bit worried when it wasn't showing any signs of stopping, as i thought i would have to go the other way!!! I was lucky that it did end up in a loop!
On Thursday 14 December 2006 at 15:00, Jack said:
What kind of watch were they both wearing?
On Friday 15 December 2006 at 15:37, An ex-consultant said:
Ahhh...yes...a person who sells you a watch and then charges you a fee to tell you the time.
On Friday 15 December 2006 at 16:07, A current consultant said:
In our opinion, the humour content of the joke could be maximised by increasing the number of sheep by 10-15%. That will be £42k ex VAT. We are still looking at the make of car and it seems our initial opinion that Lexus would be funnier may have been incorrect. That's another £25k. Have you considered the idea of a root and branch reworking and replacing the sheep with cows ? We would probably need to rethink the whole dog concept and obviously it would impact on the size of the vehicle required but that could be offset by changing the entire joke to a cowboy/ranch scenario. This update has taken ten minutes to write and that will cost you £35.