Also, interesting to note, the interviewer specifically pointed out the NFL as going through the same type of frustrations. In typical British media form, the interviewer was pandering to corporate interest in focus and language, and didn't make a single mention of the rights of the recorders, which seems perverse given that many Vines fit comfortably under the measures of Fair Use in the U.S.
IANAL, but while it seems Fair Use might cover a snip from a commercial broadcast or even arguing a private short clip of a performance (or game, if you prefer); assuming the actual playing of the game constitutes a copyrighted work, there is still the contractual issue that often forbids taping the performance. That would seem to me to be the way to prevent distribution of the clip.
They are claiming copyright over their own footage.
The phenomena at question is that of people uploading mobile phone footage of TV footage, not of their own video of the match.
I do not know what the premier league tickets say; but many venues, sports or otherwise, have limits on recording in the contact for the ticket. Realistically, most seem not to care about the iPhone clip posted to a web site; quite frankly it seems that fan clips wouldn't diminish the value of the venue's film. If I want a copy of a concert or game I buy the DVD, if available, because it is actually viewable in its entirety even if it lacks the shaking, background noise and random commentary of the iPhone version. The best model, IMHO, is the Dead, who said basically tape our concerts, trade the tapes for free, but buy our music, and other items. Seems to have worked out fine for them.
All three are Republicans that claim to want "small government", yet they insist that private contractors abide by the same rules that government agencies do - even when the contractors are cheaper and safer than than the government agencies last attempt.
Despite the myth that teachers on;y work 9 months a year bit get paid for a full year, teacher salaries, like any job's, are set based on expected work hours. Just as there really isn't such a thing as paid vacation since it is already factored into a salary theaters don't get paid while not working over the summer. Some districts even give them the choice of 12 or 9 monthly pay periods. If the school year is expanded by 25% then it is not unreasonable for teachers to be paid accordingly; it's no different than any other job all of a sudden saying they've decided to increase the work day from 8 to 10 hours but not pay you any more because they all already paying you for a full year.
Decommissioning costs (including storage, disposal, and demolition) never seem to figure into these numbers.
The authors stated they were looking at the ability of a plant to displace CO2 emissions and using the net benefits to see which is the most cost effective. Wind and solar simply do not have the capacity factors to match hydro/nuke/gas plants and high capacity costs and thus are lees cost effective in reducing CO2. Nuclear decommissioning costs were included in their numbers. In short, solar and wind cost to much per KW to build and generate too little electricity to be cost effective in reducing CO2 emissions relative to other non-carbon energy sources.
While that is a laudable goal the reality is government owned utilities rarely view "cheapest amount possible" as a primary goal. Rather, they become tools for politicians to use to maintain themselves in office by providing jobs, subsidies , etc to please their voters and donors. That is not to say government owned utilities cannot provide lower cost services just that cost is often secondary to politics.
That is not my experience, mind pointing to examples? My experience with government owned utilities is exactly the opposite of what you claim. There are several local power companies owned by the city government, they are cheaper and better run than the corporate power utility that serves the rest of the area. After heavy storms they often have power restored in half the time of the private company. Did I mention the lower power rates? Government does a rats ass job of predicting demand and supply for widgets but they do a damn good job of predicting demand and allocating resources for major utilities like power companies because it's a pretty well fixed demand and is an essential service.
My comments come from working with execs at a number of public utilities. As I pointed out, political considerations often trump "cheapest rates." Many of them do not operate plants but buy power, often subsidized federal power that can't be sold to other markets at such rates.
People always trot out the old refrain you did, but I see little experience that it's true. Rather than accept that what you hear repeated so often is true you should try to find evidence that is true because you will probably be surprised at how often it's wrong.
You missed my point in your rush to label my response. I pointed out, in response to the OP, that "cheapest amount possible" are not necessarily the goal of a public utility given their political nature; not that they can't be cheaper than private power companies. Also note that many people confuse Rural Electrification Cooperatives and their brethren as public power when in fact they are not.
In the US, maybe. In other countries, not so much. Did you never notice how the childish attitudes your politicians display are far above the levels displayed in other countries' politicians? Sure, some countries have political freak shows, but many others just get on with it - working with other parties for the good of the country.
Possible, but my experiences with politicians around the world its the "do what I have to to stay in power" gene tends to be dominant and the "work together for the good of the country even if it means I may lose" gene is recessive.
Sure, the way Russians go about nationalizing companies is not very nice or even subtle. But I wish my government did the same. Services that people need in order to live - energy, water, medical - shouldn't be on the free market. All that stuff should be publicly owned and the goal shouldn't to be to make money but to provide critical services to the people for the cheapest amount possible.
While that is a laudable goal the reality is government owned utilities rarely view "cheapest amount possible" as a primary goal. Rather, they become tools for politicians to use to maintain themselves in office by providing jobs, subsidies , etc to please their voters and donors. That is not to say government owned utilities cannot provide lower cost services just that cost is often secondary to politics.
whatever you do do not let the techies run the project. This isn't a technical solution but a business solution. The techies may think a fit gap tells them what they need to know to build a system but the reality is unless someone one really understands Hal the system is used and what the LOB need you will wind up with a mess. The IT folks will focus on the IT aspects and forget there is a whole organizational component that can derail them even if the system works.
I've seen to many projects where the focus is on getting the system to work and when the users finally get involves it's " we don't do things this way and that's not what we need." The project points to the fit gap and or requirements and it's "that's how x does it be we do it this way. The requirement says that you just didn't do it right." At that point senior LOB management starts complaining IT is replacing a working system with a piece of crap. The order then comes down to fix it and you are stuck.
The more you mod the ERP the more likely you will have to pay again to incorporate you mods in the next major ERP release. While developing your own solutions isn't cheap at least once they are working you will just (a big just) have to ensure your data feeds and APIs are still functioning properly.
...only if it's in Google's interest to block services like this instead of asking the victim to pay more money.
It is. If AdWords fail to provide a reasonable return people will stop using them and the price will drop significantly, cutting into Google's revenue. It's definitely in Google's best long term interest to stop this kind of thing.
Perhaps you don't understand how governments and large corporations structure themselves in order to save money: they use contractors instead of employees for exactly that reason.
Regardless of the disaster scenario, employee/employer rules stipulate they have to pay their employees during the time when they're normally expected to work, even if they can get no productive work from them. If they have extended downtime due to fire, construction, etc., They would have to lay off the unused workers, which means paying unemployment benefits. Contracts, on the other hand, can be written so they can be paused or terminated at will. It's up to the contracting firm to manage the pay when they're "sitting on the bench", and most of those contracts provide no compensation for periods of non-work.
On the flip side, when you are hired as a contractor, you explicitly sign up for those risks. Even though it may look like a regular job, it isn't. It's a contract.
The human side of the equation was carefully measured and surgically extracted back when the government decided to use contractors instead of employees. Employees cost too much.
Oh, I realize that quite well. Government employees are required to take leave as well in many such situations unless they can work from home. The contractors are actually hourly employees of a company that then contracts with the government. Since government contracts, on a T&E basis, cannot pay for time not worked no matter the reason the contractor gets no money and doesn't pay their employees (who are actually employees not contractors so despite your employer / employee assertion there is no requirement to pay them) either. Sure they may realize that but that still doesn't change there is an often forgotten human side to such events.
The methodology of testing the hypothesis is to look for google searches about "iphone slow" or "samsung slow". Assumption made is if people search for "iphone slow" Apple might have done something to slow down iPhones. The control group is Samsung which has the same motive as Apple but not the means because it does not control the OS.
Actually, the data was gathered to see if the professor's view that his phone had slowed down was also shared by other iPhone users; they found an interesting correlation between search spikes and new iPhone models but were careful to say that doesn't prove anything other than people perceive a slowdown when a new phone comes out. He points out some valid reasons why the Samsung / Apple data differs, primarily that Apple releases a new version of IOS with the new iPhone and thus the new iOS may not be optimized for older hardware while many Android users remain on an older version. In addition, since the Andriod device makers don't control Android they may find it cheaper not to spend a lot of time on the OS and rather invest in hardware improvements as the differentiator.
As a simple analysis, Bose created and patented the noise-cancelling headphone. They made it and marketed that rather directly as noise-cancelling headphones, initially and specifically designed to do one thing..
Not really, the concept had been around a while, and pilots had been using them long before the first pair of Bose QCs hit the market. Bose, while he did a lot of research into ANR, popularized them for use outside of the cockpit. IMHO Bose are way overpriced, you can get a set of Audio Technica, or a if you prefer an open ear design, Sennheisers that cancel noise quite well for half the price of the Bose . A Sennheiser BT for about the same price but with BT. Al of them also work as regular headphones when the battery dies, unlike the Bose QCs.
Many of the effected people are not government employees, they are hourly contractors doing clerical and office work. They either have to take vacation or go without pay, and not getting paid for a week when you are making maybe $15/hour is not pleasant. Some can work from home but since the outage was unexpected they may not have their work laptop at home. How do I know this? I have a friend who works there.
Now that Comcast will soon be the nation's only cable company, why don't they just tell the networks they will no longer pay for their channels once the current contract is up? What are the networks going to do, lose nearly all of their viewers overnight?
And Comcast would lose subscribers by the boatload as well.Cable companies have threatened that over fee disputes and the content providers tell subscribers "the cable company is taking away your sports..." Such battles don't last long as both are hostages of each other. With the OTA HD broadcasts if Comcast dud that you'd see some channels go that route if they could get airwave space; others go to internet delivery and fight with Comcast there. Comcast can't afford for companies to find alternative choices for cable because of the severe impact that would have on their revenue; as well as risking content providers discovering they can make more money and sell subscriptions at abetter price to viewers than via cable thus lowering the value of cable's subscriber base to them. The real losers will be those 200+ channels only six people watch but still get a few pennies per subscriber so it is financially viable to provide content for their six viewers.
Regarding pronunciation, I used to cringe/laugh every time Jobs said 'Jaguar.' It appears that there were three pronunciations depending on what you were referring to:
1. Mac OS: Jag-Wire
2. Large cat: Jaguar
3. British car: It's not running again
There. Fixed that.
As a side note, I wonder if Lucas' patent on the electrical short has expired yet.
announced the beta are already signed up even if they didn't get an email. I logged on under the email I requested a code for back right after the developers conference and got the code.
The EU may finally be spurred to approve more sanctions on Russia, but Russia can sell gas to China and other partners instead.
The Chinese will drive a very hard bargain for that gas. Delivering it will be time consuming and expensive. Volume will be limited by facilities for some time to come, and even after the initial scramble it can never be as efficient as delivering to Europe.
Replacing EU gas sales with sales to China would be a gift to China. They'd have Putin over a barrel; he needs the cash an they can do without the gas. There is nothing like a distress sale for getting a bargain. China could even resell some of it to the EU; although the sea borne shipping logistics would be more difficult than using a pipeline.
...you could wind up with a discrimination complaint depending on the circumstances; even if you truly did not discriminate.They would nee to substantiate what the discrimation was.... It's not generally even illegal to fire somebody simply because you've decided you just don't like them... particularly during an initial probationary period. It can still risk you being exposed to a lawsuit, but as one can sue for pretty much any reason anyways, that risk is there regardless of what you say or do.
After such a probationary period, then generally the employer is obligated to give the employee sufficient time to conform to any new expectations, and communication to that effect will generally be in writing, along with acknowledgement that the individual understands that failure to conform to the newer standards will result in dismissal.
Certainly. No one is arguing about internal personal actions.
If the employee feels that he or she is being treated differently than other employees, then that would be the time to address the concern, not after they have already been fired.
There in lies the rub. They may feel that have been treat differently but feel it is not worth bringing up; until you say something to a potential employer and they decide to sue. While we agree on a number of thinks we clearly have differing viewpoints on the risks involved with giving a reference beyond verifying employment. My POV comes from having been involved, with two separate employers, HR situations similar to this with employees who we let go; even though I didn't give a reference nor was asked to give one it still was a pain to document and justify every single action I took and spending time with lawyers who said "that could be construed as X. How did you justify it was Y." In one case a person turned in inaccurate time cards and I spent an inordinate amount of time having to prove my guidance was clear on work expectations and proving the reasons he gave for his time reporting were invalid. I quickly learned how something I though was clear and a factual statement could be construed otherwise; at least I got paid to learn that bit of employment law.
If all I say is "he didn't fit into our company's corporate culture" the employee would somehow have to argue that there were other people who didn't fit in either who were not discharged. Since there's no possible way he could ever hope to prove such an allegation, how would he proceed?
Again, I think it would be a long shot but the general tack might be to force you to define what the culture is and then look for people with similar profiles that were not fired. For example, if he was late and your employee records show other who were late were not disciplined. INAL but would also hazard a guess if your are too vaque you could wind up with a discrimination complaint depending on the circumstances; even if you truly did not discriminate. In the end, even if you win you wind up paying to defend yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, interesting to note, the interviewer specifically pointed out the NFL as going through the same type of frustrations. In typical British media form, the interviewer was pandering to corporate interest in focus and language, and didn't make a single mention of the rights of the recorders, which seems perverse given that many Vines fit comfortably under the measures of Fair Use in the U.S.
IANAL, but while it seems Fair Use might cover a snip from a commercial broadcast or even arguing a private short clip of a performance (or game, if you prefer); assuming the actual playing of the game constitutes a copyrighted work, there is still the contractual issue that often forbids taping the performance. That would seem to me to be the way to prevent distribution of the clip.
They are claiming copyright over their own footage.
The phenomena at question is that of people uploading mobile phone footage of TV footage, not of their own video of the match.
I do not know what the premier league tickets say; but many venues, sports or otherwise, have limits on recording in the contact for the ticket. Realistically, most seem not to care about the iPhone clip posted to a web site; quite frankly it seems that fan clips wouldn't diminish the value of the venue's film. If I want a copy of a concert or game I buy the DVD, if available, because it is actually viewable in its entirety even if it lacks the shaking, background noise and random commentary of the iPhone version. The best model, IMHO, is the Dead, who said basically tape our concerts, trade the tapes for free, but buy our music, and other items. Seems to have worked out fine for them.
All three are Republicans that claim to want "small government", yet they insist that private contractors abide by the same rules that government agencies do - even when the contractors are cheaper and safer than than the government agencies last attempt.
Does the (R) after name stand for "Reprobate"?
No, it stands for Rented.
Despite the myth that teachers on;y work 9 months a year bit get paid for a full year, teacher salaries, like any job's, are set based on expected work hours. Just as there really isn't such a thing as paid vacation since it is already factored into a salary theaters don't get paid while not working over the summer. Some districts even give them the choice of 12 or 9 monthly pay periods. If the school year is expanded by 25% then it is not unreasonable for teachers to be paid accordingly; it's no different than any other job all of a sudden saying they've decided to increase the work day from 8 to 10 hours but not pay you any more because they all already paying you for a full year.
Decommissioning costs (including storage, disposal, and demolition) never seem to figure into these numbers.
The authors stated they were looking at the ability of a plant to displace CO2 emissions and using the net benefits to see which is the most cost effective. Wind and solar simply do not have the capacity factors to match hydro/nuke/gas plants and high capacity costs and thus are lees cost effective in reducing CO2. Nuclear decommissioning costs were included in their numbers. In short, solar and wind cost to much per KW to build and generate too little electricity to be cost effective in reducing CO2 emissions relative to other non-carbon energy sources.
Once they get it, all will be forgotten
That is not my experience, mind pointing to examples? My experience with government owned utilities is exactly the opposite of what you claim. There are several local power companies owned by the city government, they are cheaper and better run than the corporate power utility that serves the rest of the area. After heavy storms they often have power restored in half the time of the private company. Did I mention the lower power rates? Government does a rats ass job of predicting demand and supply for widgets but they do a damn good job of predicting demand and allocating resources for major utilities like power companies because it's a pretty well fixed demand and is an essential service.
My comments come from working with execs at a number of public utilities. As I pointed out, political considerations often trump "cheapest rates." Many of them do not operate plants but buy power, often subsidized federal power that can't be sold to other markets at such rates.
People always trot out the old refrain you did, but I see little experience that it's true. Rather than accept that what you hear repeated so often is true you should try to find evidence that is true because you will probably be surprised at how often it's wrong.
You missed my point in your rush to label my response. I pointed out, in response to the OP, that "cheapest amount possible" are not necessarily the goal of a public utility given their political nature; not that they can't be cheaper than private power companies. Also note that many people confuse Rural Electrification Cooperatives and their brethren as public power when in fact they are not.
In the US, maybe. In other countries, not so much. Did you never notice how the childish attitudes your politicians display are far above the levels displayed in other countries' politicians? Sure, some countries have political freak shows, but many others just get on with it - working with other parties for the good of the country.
Possible, but my experiences with politicians around the world its the "do what I have to to stay in power" gene tends to be dominant and the "work together for the good of the country even if it means I may lose" gene is recessive.
Sure, the way Russians go about nationalizing companies is not very nice or even subtle. But I wish my government did the same. Services that people need in order to live - energy, water, medical - shouldn't be on the free market. All that stuff should be publicly owned and the goal shouldn't to be to make money but to provide critical services to the people for the cheapest amount possible.
While that is a laudable goal the reality is government owned utilities rarely view "cheapest amount possible" as a primary goal. Rather, they become tools for politicians to use to maintain themselves in office by providing jobs, subsidies , etc to please their voters and donors. That is not to say government owned utilities cannot provide lower cost services just that cost is often secondary to politics.
whatever you do do not let the techies run the project. This isn't a technical solution but a business solution. The techies may think a fit gap tells them what they need to know to build a system but the reality is unless someone one really understands Hal the system is used and what the LOB need you will wind up with a mess. The IT folks will focus on the IT aspects and forget there is a whole organizational component that can derail them even if the system works.
I've seen to many projects where the focus is on getting the system to work and when the users finally get involves it's " we don't do things this way and that's not what we need." The project points to the fit gap and or requirements and it's "that's how x does it be we do it this way. The requirement says that you just didn't do it right." At that point senior LOB management starts complaining IT is replacing a working system with a piece of crap. The order then comes down to fix it and you are stuck.
The more you mod the ERP the more likely you will have to pay again to incorporate you mods in the next major ERP release. While developing your own solutions isn't cheap at least once they are working you will just (a big just) have to ensure your data feeds and APIs are still functioning properly.
They can go about their business. Move along...
just over half of the Air Force military officers put in charge of U.S. Air Force nuclear launch facilities
The Navy maintains a reasonably large fleet of FBMs that are not manned by the Air Force.
...only if it's in Google's interest to block services like this instead of asking the victim to pay more money.
It is. If AdWords fail to provide a reasonable return people will stop using them and the price will drop significantly, cutting into Google's revenue. It's definitely in Google's best long term interest to stop this kind of thing.
Perhaps you don't understand how governments and large corporations structure themselves in order to save money: they use contractors instead of employees for exactly that reason.
Regardless of the disaster scenario, employee/employer rules stipulate they have to pay their employees during the time when they're normally expected to work, even if they can get no productive work from them. If they have extended downtime due to fire, construction, etc., They would have to lay off the unused workers, which means paying unemployment benefits. Contracts, on the other hand, can be written so they can be paused or terminated at will. It's up to the contracting firm to manage the pay when they're "sitting on the bench", and most of those contracts provide no compensation for periods of non-work.
On the flip side, when you are hired as a contractor, you explicitly sign up for those risks. Even though it may look like a regular job, it isn't. It's a contract.
The human side of the equation was carefully measured and surgically extracted back when the government decided to use contractors instead of employees. Employees cost too much.
Oh, I realize that quite well. Government employees are required to take leave as well in many such situations unless they can work from home. The contractors are actually hourly employees of a company that then contracts with the government. Since government contracts, on a T&E basis, cannot pay for time not worked no matter the reason the contractor gets no money and doesn't pay their employees (who are actually employees not contractors so despite your employer / employee assertion there is no requirement to pay them) either. Sure they may realize that but that still doesn't change there is an often forgotten human side to such events.
In the end, the professor, after writing thousands of words, comes to no conclusion.
He's an economist. That's his job.
The methodology of testing the hypothesis is to look for google searches about "iphone slow" or "samsung slow". Assumption made is if people search for "iphone slow" Apple might have done something to slow down iPhones. The control group is Samsung which has the same motive as Apple but not the means because it does not control the OS.
Actually, the data was gathered to see if the professor's view that his phone had slowed down was also shared by other iPhone users; they found an interesting correlation between search spikes and new iPhone models but were careful to say that doesn't prove anything other than people perceive a slowdown when a new phone comes out. He points out some valid reasons why the Samsung / Apple data differs, primarily that Apple releases a new version of IOS with the new iPhone and thus the new iOS may not be optimized for older hardware while many Android users remain on an older version. In addition, since the Andriod device makers don't control Android they may find it cheaper not to spend a lot of time on the OS and rather invest in hardware improvements as the differentiator.
As a simple analysis, Bose created and patented the noise-cancelling headphone. They made it and marketed that rather directly as noise-cancelling headphones, initially and specifically designed to do one thing..
Not really, the concept had been around a while, and pilots had been using them long before the first pair of Bose QCs hit the market. Bose, while he did a lot of research into ANR, popularized them for use outside of the cockpit. IMHO Bose are way overpriced, you can get a set of Audio Technica, or a if you prefer an open ear design, Sennheisers that cancel noise quite well for half the price of the Bose . A Sennheiser BT for about the same price but with BT. Al of them also work as regular headphones when the battery dies, unlike the Bose QCs.
Many of the effected people are not government employees, they are hourly contractors doing clerical and office work. They either have to take vacation or go without pay, and not getting paid for a week when you are making maybe $15/hour is not pleasant. Some can work from home but since the outage was unexpected they may not have their work laptop at home. How do I know this? I have a friend who works there.
Now that Comcast will soon be the nation's only cable company, why don't they just tell the networks they will no longer pay for their channels once the current contract is up? What are the networks going to do, lose nearly all of their viewers overnight?
And Comcast would lose subscribers by the boatload as well.Cable companies have threatened that over fee disputes and the content providers tell subscribers "the cable company is taking away your sports..." Such battles don't last long as both are hostages of each other. With the OTA HD broadcasts if Comcast dud that you'd see some channels go that route if they could get airwave space; others go to internet delivery and fight with Comcast there. Comcast can't afford for companies to find alternative choices for cable because of the severe impact that would have on their revenue; as well as risking content providers discovering they can make more money and sell subscriptions at abetter price to viewers than via cable thus lowering the value of cable's subscriber base to them. The real losers will be those 200+ channels only six people watch but still get a few pennies per subscriber so it is financially viable to provide content for their six viewers.
Regarding pronunciation, I used to cringe/laugh every time Jobs said 'Jaguar.' It appears that there were three pronunciations depending on what you were referring to:
1. Mac OS: Jag-Wire
2. Large cat: Jaguar
3. British car: It's not running again
There. Fixed that.
As a side note, I wonder if Lucas' patent on the electrical short has expired yet.
announced the beta are already signed up even if they didn't get an email. I logged on under the email I requested a code for back right after the developers conference and got the code.
The EU may finally be spurred to approve more sanctions on Russia, but Russia can sell gas to China and other partners instead.
The Chinese will drive a very hard bargain for that gas. Delivering it will be time consuming and expensive. Volume will be limited by facilities for some time to come, and even after the initial scramble it can never be as efficient as delivering to Europe.
Replacing EU gas sales with sales to China would be a gift to China. They'd have Putin over a barrel; he needs the cash an they can do without the gas. There is nothing like a distress sale for getting a bargain. China could even resell some of it to the EU; although the sea borne shipping logistics would be more difficult than using a pipeline.
After such a probationary period, then generally the employer is obligated to give the employee sufficient time to conform to any new expectations, and communication to that effect will generally be in writing, along with acknowledgement that the individual understands that failure to conform to the newer standards will result in dismissal.
Certainly. No one is arguing about internal personal actions.
If the employee feels that he or she is being treated differently than other employees, then that would be the time to address the concern, not after they have already been fired.
There in lies the rub. They may feel that have been treat differently but feel it is not worth bringing up; until you say something to a potential employer and they decide to sue. While we agree on a number of thinks we clearly have differing viewpoints on the risks involved with giving a reference beyond verifying employment. My POV comes from having been involved, with two separate employers, HR situations similar to this with employees who we let go; even though I didn't give a reference nor was asked to give one it still was a pain to document and justify every single action I took and spending time with lawyers who said "that could be construed as X. How did you justify it was Y." In one case a person turned in inaccurate time cards and I spent an inordinate amount of time having to prove my guidance was clear on work expectations and proving the reasons he gave for his time reporting were invalid. I quickly learned how something I though was clear and a factual statement could be construed otherwise; at least I got paid to learn that bit of employment law.
If all I say is "he didn't fit into our company's corporate culture" the employee would somehow have to argue that there were other people who didn't fit in either who were not discharged. Since there's no possible way he could ever hope to prove such an allegation, how would he proceed?
Again, I think it would be a long shot but the general tack might be to force you to define what the culture is and then look for people with similar profiles that were not fired. For example, if he was late and your employee records show other who were late were not disciplined. INAL but would also hazard a guess if your are too vaque you could wind up with a discrimination complaint depending on the circumstances; even if you truly did not discriminate. In the end, even if you win you wind up paying to defend yourself.