Executive Decision [Humor]
Published on 17 Jul 2006 at 8:00 am |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, One Corporation Under God, And Stock Options For All, Business and Corporation Related, Pure Geek, Information Technology, Humor.
An engineer was walking with a senior technical consultant to take a proposal to the CIO for approval, and upon seeing the exhorbitant fees, wondered aloud if he could ever become a consultant.
"Well, let’s find out." said the consultant. "What equipment would you use to connect a 1980 IBM mainframe supporting 1,000 users and a tin can?"
The engineer knit his brow and thought about the problem for a moment. He paused next to the hardwall offices and started gnawing on a nail. Finally he threw up his hands in exasperation. "I give up, what?"
"A standard RJ-45 cable." said the senior consultant.
"An RJ-45 cable!" exclaimed the engineer. "You can’t connect an ancient mainframe and a tin can with an RJ-45 cable! The tin can doesn’t even have circuitry!"
"So replace it with an electronic desk phone."
"A desk phone isn’t digital!"
"So plug it into a Voice-over-IP analog telephone adapter."
"But mainframes that old can’t even do networking!"
"So replace the mainframe and applications with Linux on a 486 PC running Telnet"
"But Linux doesn’t support IP telephony!"
"So put Asterix software on it."
The engineer waggled a finger at the consultant, convinced he had him at last. "Yeah, but you need a special crossover cable to connect two host devices together– a standard one won’t work!"
"Right," said the consultant smartly as they arrived at the CIO’s office. "I just threw that in to make sure you were competent with the basic technology."
The CIO, overhearing the conversation, looked up from his desk chuckling and said, "No, no, no– all that’s the hard way. What you do is tell the CEO that you need $100,000 for the equipment to connect the two devices together."
"All that equipment doesn’t cost anywhere near $100,000!!!" exclaimed the engineer and the consultant in unison.
"No, it doesn’t," smirked the CIO. "You’ll be told to use a $4.95 tube of super glue instead."
[Paul]
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