In response to the use of social media in these protests, the Tunisian government began a hack of Tunisian citizens' Facebook accounts, and reports arose of accounts being deleted.

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# The Inside Story of How Facebook Responded to Tunisian Hacks

The social-media site's security team talks to The Atlantic -- revealing key details about a revolution that could become a parable for Internet activism.

It was on Christmas Day that Facebook's Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan first noticed strange things going on in Tunisia.

Reports started to trickle in that political-protest pages were being hacked.

"We were getting anecdotal reports saying, 'It looks like someone logged into my account and deleted it,'" Sullivan said.

For Tunisians, it was another run-in with Ammar, the nickname they've given to the authorities that censor the country's Internet.

In the days after the holiday, Sullivan's security team started to take a closer look at the data, but it wasn't entirely clear what was happening.

In the US, they could look to see if different IP addresses, which identify particular nodes on the network, were accessing the same account.

But in Tunisia, the addresses are commonly reassigned.

The evidence that accounts were being hacked remained anecdotal.

Facebook's security team couldn't prove something was wrong in the data.

It wasn't until after the new year that the shocking truth emerged:

Ammar was in the process of stealing an entire country's worth of passwords.

December of 2010 saw the most substantial civil unrest in Tunisia in the reign of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, which began with a bloodless coup in November 1987.

Beginning with street protests in the country's poor interior region of Sidi Bouzid, the calls for change were soon echoed by more powerful civil society organizations, notably the country's only labor union, the UGTT.

But despite the turmoil, it wasn't clear what exactly might happen.

"It is too early to know if these protests signal the beginning of the end for Ben Ali," wrote Christopher Alexander in Foreign Policy on January 3.

"However, Tunisia's current political scene looks a bit like it did in 1975 and 1976, the beginning of the long slide for Ben Ali's predecessor, Habib Bourguiba."

That is to say, even expert analysts of the country couldn't tell if Ben Ali would remain in power for a few more weeks or a decade.

It did not feel inevitable that Ben Ali would be deposed.

People had protested in the streets before.

It wasn't clear that this time would be different.

There has been a lot of debate about whether Twitter helped unleash the massive changes that led Ben Ali to leave office on January 14, but Facebook appears to have played a more important role in spreading dissent.

"I think Facebook played a bigger role in this case," said Jillian York of the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, who has been tracking the Tunisian situation closely.

"There are a lot more Facebook users than Twitter users.

Facebook allows for strong ties in a way that Twitter doesn't.

One early sign that Tunisians felt Facebook could be useful: Back in July, bloggers Photoshopped a picture of Mark Zuckerberg to show him holding up a sign that read, "Sayeb Sala7, ya 3ammar," the slogan for a freedom of expression campaign late in 2010.

Later, Zuckerberg popped up on a sign outside the Saudi Arabian embassy carried by Tunisian protesters demanding the arrest of Ben Ali.

York said that Tunisian bloggers and activists had told her that the ability to upload video to Facebook drove its usage because many other video-sharing sites had been blocked by the government.

The videos -- shot shakily with cameraphones -- created a link between what was happening on the streets in the poor areas of the country and the broader Tunisian population.

In one video -- since taken down, apparently -- a young man is lying on a gurney with his skull cracked open.

The video focuses in on the man's face and as the camera pulls back, we see that there are two other people with cameraphones recording the injury.

Video after video of the revolutionary events captures other people videoing the same event.

Those videos, and the actions they recorded, became the raw material for a much greater online apparatus that could amplify each injury, death, and protest.

But it wasn't just videos that people were sharing.

All kinds of information passed between Tunisians.

For activists as well as everyday people, Facebook became an indispensable resource for tracking the minute-by-minute development of the situation.

By January 8, Facebook says that it had several hundred thousand more users than it had ever had before in Tunisia, a country with a few more people than Michigan.

Scaled up to the size to the U.S., the burst of activity was like adding 10 million users in a week.

And the average time spent on the site more than doubled what it had been before.

Rim Abida, a Tunisian-born, Harvard-educated development consultant now living in Rio de Janeiro, said that over the course of the events, her "relationship to Facebook changed entirely."

"It basically went from being a waste of time or procrastination tool, to my go-to source on up-to-date information," Abida wrote in a Facebook message to me.

"My mom is back in Tunisia on her own, and my Tunisian network on Facebook was posting the most up-to-date info on what was happening on the ground.

It was stuff the major media channels weren't reporting, such as numbers to call to reach the military and what was happening when in what specific neighborhood."

In between the scenes of local unrest and people like Abida, there was a whole stratum of bloggers, writers, and social media sharers who watched and shared important videos.

While clashes with security forces took place in the streets, Rim, who asked we not use her last name, was in her bed in her apartment in Tunis.

Like the blogger cliché, Rim sat in her pajamas sharing videos.

In her hands, small protests that reached 50 people could suddenly reach another 50, who would share it with another 50.

The idea that it might be time for the regime to change spread from city to city faster than street protests and even middle class places got involved.

Rim doesn't think the Tunisian revolution was a "Facebook revolution," but it was sufficiently important that when rumors started to fly on the 13th about what kind of retaliation the government was prepared to take, it took this form:

"There were rumors that Facebook or electricity was going to be shut down," Rim IM'd me from Tunis.

After more than ten days of intensive investigation and study, Facebook's security team realized something very, very bad was going on.

The country's Internet service providers were running a malicious piece of code that was recording users' login information when they went to sites like Facebook.

By January 5, it was clear that an entire country's worth of passwords were in the process of being stolen right in the midst of the greatest political upheaval in two decades.

Sullivan and his team decided they needed a country-level solution -- and fast.

Though Sullivan said Facebook has encountered a wide variety of security problems and been involved in various political situations, they'd never seen anything like what was happening in Tunisia.

"We've had to deal with ISPs in the past who have tried to filter or block our site," Sullivan said.

"In this case, we were confronted by ISPs that were doing something unprecedented in that they were being very active in their attempts to intercept user information."

If you need a parable for the potential and pitfalls of a social-media enabled revolution, this is it: the very tool that people are using for their activism becomes the very means by which their identities could be compromised.

When the details are filled in on the abstractions of Clay Shirky and Evgeny Morozov's work on the promise (former) and danger (latter) of Internet activism, the ground truth seems to be that both had their visions play out simultaneously.

At Facebook, Sullivan's team decided to take an apolitical approach to the problem.

This was simply a hack that required a technical response.

"At its core, from our standpoint, it's a security issue around passwords and making sure that we protect the integrity of passwords and accounts," he said.

"It was very much a black and white security issue and less of a political issue."

The software was basically a country-level keystroke logger, with the passwords presumably being fed from the ISPs to the Ben Ali regime.

As a user, you just logged into some part of the cloud, Facebook or your email, say, and it snatched up that information.

If you stayed persistently logged in, you were safe.

It was those who logged out and came back that were open to the attack.

Sullivan's team rapidly coded a two-step response to the problem.

First, all Tunisian requests for Facebook were routed to an https server.

The Https protocol encrypts the information you send across it, so it's not susceptible to the keylogging strategy employed by the Tunisian ISPs.

The second technical solution they implemented was a "roadblock" for anyone who had logged out and then back in during the time when the malicious code was running.

Like Facebook's version of a "mother's maiden name" question to get access to your old password, it asks you to identify your friends in photos to complete an account login.

They rolled out the new solutions to 100% of Tunisia by Monday morning, five days after they'd realized what was happening.

Most specifically, ISPs can force a downgrade of https to http, but Sullivan said that Facebook had not seen that happen.

Though Sullivan is the unflappable type, the Tunisian situation seemed to force him into a bit of reflection.

"When you step back and think about how Internet traffic is routed around the world, an astonishing amount is susceptible to government access," he noted.

And if governments around the world can, at least hypothetically, compromise users, it makes you wonder, as the Berkman Center's Jillian York has, why Facebook hasn't implemented special tools or processes for activists.

The biggest issue is that political dissidents often do not want to use their real names in places where activism can get you killed.

Facebook has adamantly opposed activists attempts to use pseudonyms.

"We get requests all the time in a few different contexts where people would like to impersonate someone else.

Police wanting to go undercover or human rights activists, say," Sullivan said.

"And we, just based on our core mission and core product, don't want to allow that.

Facebook is a place where people connect with real people in their lives using their real identities."

Does Facebook have to go the extra mile to support activists?

Sullivan said that preliminary work has been done to create a special complaint reporting process for NGOs and other activists, a move that would address one long-time complaint.

More generally, though, Facebook certainly don't seem to be under any obligations to provide special treatment.

But if Facebook really is becoming the public sphere -- and wants to remain central to people's real sociopolitically embedded lives -- maybe they're going to have to think beyond the situational technical fix.

Facebook needs to own its position as a part of The Way the World Works and provide protections for political speech and actors.

Because the protests and overthrow of Ben Ali were just the beginning of this story.

Hopes are high, but as we've seen so many times in the global south, the exit of one corrupt dictator usually means the entrance of another.

To avoid that fate, politically active Tunisians will be using all of the tools at their disposal, including and maybe especially, Facebook.

In fact, Rim said, it's already being used to debate how to create a new government and a better Tunisia.

We want to hear what you think about this article.

Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Alexis C. Madrigal is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.

The rising usages of social media in many nations has led to the emergence of citizens organizing protests through social media, sometimes called "Twitter Revolutions". The most notable of these social media led protests were parts Arab Spring uprisings, starting in 2010.


Jean Vallière (died 8 August 1523 in Paris) was an Augustinian monk burned at the stake for heresy in 1523 for supporting the teachings of Martin Luther.

(meta data) TITLE: ExecutedToday.com » 1523: Jean Valliere, the first Protestant burnt in France

1930: Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, strange fruit 1961: José Isaías Constante Laureano, the last executed in Mexico

## 1523: Jean Valliere, the first Protestant burnt in France

On this date in 1523, a Norman hermit named Jean Vallière was burned at the stake at a Paris pig market, while the books of the humanistic nobleman Louis de Berquin were burned in front of Notre Dame by the Paris parlement.

Berquin would follow Valliere's fate ere that first decade of Lutheranism was out, but the obscurity who died on this date seems to have been an Augustinian preacher whose zany idea that Jesus was the son of Joseph and not God would have been no more welcomed by Luther than by Rome.

Friend and foe alike tended to project onto Luther any old subversive project that wanted either the imprimatur of theological credibility or the brand of the heresiarch and his "pestilential doctrine full of execrable errors."

(That's how the Sorbonne condemned Luther in 1521.)

In this case, guilt by association was intended to intimidate with Valliere's example scholars like Berquin.

A most particular threat was a clique of reform-oriented intellectuals at Meaux under the leadership of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples; d'Etaples that very year of 1523 completed a French translation of the New Testament.

These folk in Meaux persisted only under the personal protection of the French King Francis I and his reformist sister Marguerite of Navarre.

Their project of reform within the church never really took, and neither did the Meaux circle commit itself to martyrdom for the new faith(s).

But Marguerite of Navarre's grandson would be the man to settle this century's French Wars of Religion by conquering as a Huguenot, converting to Catholicism, and ruling illustriously as Henri IV.

1848: Puran Appu, Kandy rebel - 20191862: Frisby McCullough, Missouri bushwhacker - 20181942: Six German saboteurs - 2017Themed Set: Italy - 20161735: Nicholas Bighelini, Mantua betrayer - 20161990: Sam Cayhall in Grisham's "The Chamber" - 20151570: John Felton, papal bull promulgator - 20141846: John Rodda, nobody chokes baby on acid - 20131849: Ugo Bassi, nationalist priest - 20121914: Rudolf Duala Manga Bell, in German Kamerun - 20101812: Daniel Dawson, for the integrity of sport - 20091944: Eight July 20 plotters - 2008

1553: Michael Servetus, but not to defend a doctrine

1539: Don Carlos Ometochtzin, Aztec heretic

1314: Jacques de Molay, last Templar Grand Master

1596: Francisca Nunez de Carvajal, her children, and four other crypto-Jews of her family

1556: Thomas Cranmer, architect of Anglicanism

1554: David van der Leyen and Levina Ghyselius, Anabaptist martyrs

Entry Filed under: 16th Century,Burned,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,France,God,Heresy,History,Milestones,Public Executions,Religious Figures

Tags: 1520s, 1523, august 8, jean valliere, paris, Protestant Reformation

## One thought on "1523: Jean Valliere, the first Protestant burnt in France"

Your info on Jean Vallière (Aug. 8, 1523) may be in error.

The Jeopardy TV show of March 20, 2015 indicated he was "considered" the first French Huguenot to be martyred, but the book The Huguenots by Geoffrey Treasure (2013), page 67 says: "In 1523 the Augustinian monk Jean Vallière was burned in Paris for *having read and commented on Luther's works.*"

I suspect your source of info for his "zany idea that Jesus was the son of Joseph and not God" is likely from erring Catholic historians.

You may want to consider revising this entry on your informative website.

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Exclusively available on this site: our one-of-a-kind custom playing card deck.

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In 1998, the City purchased the entire depot property from the Union Pacific Railroad, which had absorbed the SP.

(meta data) TITLE:  Tucson, AZ (TUS) | Great American Stations

Helping communities discover and develop the economic power of America's train stations.

## Born a Spanish Colonial beauty and later given a streamlined makeover, the historic Tucson depot is home to a museum, restaurant and offices.

For information about Amtrak fares and schedules, please call 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245).

The Tucson depot is today the pride of downtown.

Originally designed in 1907 by Southern Pacific Railway (SP) staff architect Daniel Patterson and staff engineer J.D. Wallace, the original brick structure was in the Spanish Revival style then so popular throughout the southwest.

The building, costing $665,000, featured a center portion with a hipped red tile roof flanked by two end towers that framed the entire composition.

The windows of each tower displayed elaborate ornamentation in the Churrigueresque style, marked by expressive, sculptural detailing generally associated with Spanish architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries.

A circular drive allowed visitors to pull up to the front entrance to pick up and drop off friends and family who could linger underneath the shade of the front arcade.

In 1941, the SP decided to enlarge and modernize the facility.

The renovation increased the square footage by one-third, extending the arcade and allowing passengers to access tracks through tunnels.

At this time, the façade received an Art Moderne update, and was accordingly stripped of its Churrigueresque decoration in favor of a more streamlined aesthetic.

The main waiting room is decorated with colorful blue and yellow tiles and handsome wooden benches.

It was this version of the depot that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor experienced when they visited Tucson in 1959.

Although quite beautiful and impressive, the 1907 depot was actually the second on the site.

When the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived from Yuma in 1880, the company built a wooden station with deep eaves and windows featuring colorful awnings; President McKinley stopped here in 1900.

This building was replaced because passenger and freight traffic outgrew the space.

The 1907 station complex was sold to the city of Tucson in 1998 by the Union Pacific Railroad for $2.1 million dollars.

With the decline of passenger rail travel after World War II, the depot had fallen into poor condition.

The Mayor and City Council appointed a task force to develop a master plan for the area; it was decided to renovate the buildings to the 1941 period.

Upon completion of the $2.8 million renovation, the depot now offers office, restaurant, and retail space in addition to its rail functions.

In the depot's former records vault, one may find the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum, opened in 2005 with generous funding from city, county, federal, and private funding sources, including a Federal Transportation Enhancement grant.

The museum tells the story of Tucson's fascinating rail heritage.

Near the museum one may also admire Southern Pacific Steam Locomotive #1673, which played a starring role in the 1954 film "Oklahoma."

A ten year restoration and fund raising effort finally saw the dedication of the locomotive at the restored depot in 2002.

Located in the Sonoran Desert and surrounded by five mountain ranges, Tucson is the second largest city in Arizona, and home to the University of Arizona, founded in 1885.

The city's name comes from the native O'odham name "Cuk Son" meaning "at the base of the black hill."

Recent archaeological excavations in the area located a village site dating from 4,000 years ago.

In 1700, Jesuit Fr. Eusebio Kino founded Mission San Xavier del Bac.

It was north of present day Tucson, in the vicinity of downtown.

The Spanish constructed a walled fortress in 1775, referring to it as Presidio San Agustin del Tucson.

Tucson became part of the United States in 1854 after the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico.

From 1867-77, the city served as capital of Arizona Territory.

Tucson and its suburbs are a center for high-tech industry such as optics and optoelectronics, providing the moniker of "Optics Valley."

The University of Arizona and federal installations such as Davis-Monthan Air Force Base constitute a large portion of the employment sector.

Tucson is also home to the world famous Gem and Mineral Show, held every February, as well as the Fiesta de los Vaqueros, which marks the beginning of the U.S. rodeo season.

This facility has a waiting room and is staffed by Amtrak employees.

Tucson is served by the tri-weekly Sunset Limited/Texas Eagle (Westbound: Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday; Eastbound: Monday, Thursday, Saturday).

#### Station Building (with waiting room)

Amtrak Express shipping availableChecked baggage service available Checked baggage storage available Bike boxes for saleBaggage carts available Ski bags not availableBag storage available with FeeShipping Boxes for saleNo baggage assistance

Same-day parking is available; fees may applyOvernight parking is available; fees may apply

Accessible platformAccessible RestroomsAccessible ticket officeAccessible waiting roomAccessible water fountainAccessible same-day parking is available; fees may applyAccessible overnight parking is available; fees may applyNo high platformWheelchair availableWheelchair lift available

Station HoursTicket Office HoursPassenger Assistance Hours

The depot was built in 1907 by the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP).   It was designed by the SP's architect, Daniel J. Patterson, who designed a number of depots during the same era, including the San Antonio Station.


It was not until the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s that the factor “quality” drastically shifted and became a strategic approach created by Harvard professor David Garvin.

(meta data) TITLE: Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality

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# Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality

U.S. managers know that they have to improve the quality of their products because, alas, U.S. consumers have told them so.

A survey in 1981 reported that nearly 50% of U.S. consumers believed that the quality of U.S. products had dropped during the previous five years; more recent surveys have found that a quarter of consumers are "not at all" confident that U.S. industry can be depended on to deliver reliable products.

Many companies have tried to upgrade their quality, adopting programs that have been staples of the quality movement for a generation: cost of quality calculations, interfunctional teams, reliability engineering, or statistical quality control.

Few companies, however, have learned to compete on quality.

Part of the problem, of course, is that until Japanese and European competition intensified, not many companies seriously tried to make quality programs work even as they implemented them.

But even if companies had implemented the traditional principles of quality control more rigorously, it is doubtful that U.S. consumers would be satisfied today.

In my view, most of those principles were narrow in scope; they were designed as purely defensive measures to preempt failures or eliminate "defects."

What managers need now is an aggressive strategy to gain and hold markets, with high quality as a competitive linchpin.

To get a better grasp of the defensive character of traditional quality control, we should understand what the quality movement in the United States has achieved so far.

How much expense on quality was tolerable?

In 1951, Joseph Juran tackled these questions in the first edition of his Quality Control Handbook, a publication that became the quality movement's bible.

Juran observed that quality could be understood in terms of avoidable and unavoidable costs: the former resulted from defects and product failures like scrapped materials or labor hours required for rework, repair, and complaint processing; the latter were associated with prevention, i.e., inspection, sampling, sorting, and other quality control initiatives.

Juran regarded failure costs as "gold in the mine" because they could be reduced sharply by investing in quality improvement.

He estimated that avoidable quality losses typically ranged from $500 to $1,000 per productive operator per year—big money back in the 1950s.

Reading Juran's book, executives inferred roughly how much to invest in quality improvement: expenditures on prevention were justified if they were lower than the costs of product failure.

A corollary principle was that decisions made early in the production chain (e.g., when engineers first sketched out a product's design) have implications for the level of quality costs incurred later, both in the factory and the field.

In 1956, Armand Feigenbaum took Juran's ideas a step further by proposing "total quality control" (TQC).

Companies would never make high-quality products, he argued, if the manufacturing department were forced to pursue quality in isolation.

TQC called for "interfunctional teams" from marketing, engineering, purchasing, and manufacturing.

These teams would share responsibility for all phases of design and manufacturing and would disband only when they had placed a product in the hands of a satisfied customer—who remained satisfied.

Feigenbaum noted that all new products moved through three stages of activity: design control, incoming material control, and product or shopfloor control.

But Feigenbaum did not really consider how quality was first of all a strategic question for any business; how, for instance, quality might govern the development of a design and the choice of features or options.

Rather, design control meant for Feigenbaum mainly preproduction assessments of a new design's manufacturability, or that projected manufacturing techniques should be debugged through pilot runs.

Materials control included vendor evaluations and incoming inspection procedures.

In TQC, quality was a kind of burden to be shared—no single department shouldered all the responsibility.

Top management was ultimately accountable for the effectiveness of the system; Feigenbaum, like Juran, proposed careful reporting of the costs of quality to senior executives in order to ensure their commitment.

The two also stressed statistical approaches to quality, including process control charts that set limits to acceptable variations in key variables affecting a product's production.

They endorsed sampling procedures that allowed managers to draw inferences about the quality of entire batches of products from the condition of items in a small, randomly selected sample.

Despite their attention to these techniques, Juran, Feigenbaum, and other experts like W. Edwards Deming were trying to get managers to see beyond purely statistical controls on quality.

Meanwhile, another branch of the quality movement emerged, relying even more heavily on probability theory and statistics.

This was "reliability engineering," which originated in the aerospace and electronics industries.

In 1950, only one-third of the U.S. Navy's electronic devices worked properly.

A subsequent study by the Rand Corporation estimated that every vacuum tube the military used had to be backed by nine others in warehouses or on order.

Reliability engineering addressed these problems by adapting the laws of probability to the challenge of predicting equipment stress.

Reliability engineering measures led to:

Techniques for reducing failure rates while products were still in the design stage.

Failure mode and effect analysis, which systematically reviewed how alternative designs could fail.

Individual component analysis, which computed the failure probability of key components and aimed to eliminate or strengthen the weakest links.

Derating, which required that parts be used below their specified stress levels.

Redundancy, which called for a parallel system to back up an important component or subsystem in case it failed.

Naturally, an effective reliability program required managers to monitor field failures closely to give company engineers the information needed to plan new designs.

Effective field failure reporting also demanded the development of systems of data collection, including return of failed parts to the laboratory for testing and analysis.

Now, the proponents of all these approaches to quality control might well have denied that their views of quality were purely defensive.

But what else was implied by the solutions they stressed—material controls, outgoing batch inspections, stress tests?

Perhaps the best way to see the implications of their logic is in traditional quality control's most extreme form, a program called "Zero Defects."

No other program defined quality so stringently as an absence of failures—and no wonder, since it emerged from the defense industries where the product was a missile whose flawless operation was, for obvious reasons, imperative.

In 1961, the Martin Company was building Pershing missiles for the U.S. Army.

The design of the missile was sound, but Martin found that it could maintain high quality only through a massive program of inspection.

It decided to offer workers incentives to lower the defect rate, and in December 1961, delivered a Pershing missile to Cape Canaveral with "zero discrepancies."

Buoyed by this success, Martin's general manager in Orlando, Florida accepted a challenge, issued by the U.S. Army's missile command, to deliver the first field Pershing one month ahead of schedule.

He promised that the missile would be perfect, with no hardware problems or document errors, and that all equipment would be fully operational 10 days after delivery (the norm was 90 days or more).

Two months of feverish activity followed; Martin asked all employees to contribute to building the missile exactly right the first time since there would be virtually no time for the usual inspections.

Management worked hard to maintain enthusiasm on the plant floor.

In February 1962, Martin delivered on time a perfect missile that was fully operational in less than 24 hours.

This experience was eye-opening for both Martin and the rest of the aerospace industry.

After careful review, management concluded that, in effect, its own changed attitude had assured the project's success.

In the words of one close observer: "The one time management demanded perfection, it happened!"1

Martin management thereafter told employees that the only acceptable quality standard was "zero defects."

It instilled this principle in the work force through training, special events, and by posting quality results.

It set goals for workers and put great effort into giving each worker positive criticism.

Formal techniques for problem solving, however, remained limited.

For the most part, the program focused on motivation—on changing the attitudes of employees.

On the whole, U.S. corporations did not keep pace with quality control innovations the way a number of overseas competitors did.

Particularly after World War II, U.S. corporations expanded rapidly and many became complacent.

Managers knew that consumers wouldn't drive a VW Beetle, indestructible as it was, if they could afford a fancier car—even if this meant more visits to the repair shop.

But if U.S. car manufacturers had gotten their products to outlast Beetles, U.S. quality managers still would not have been prepared for Toyota Corollas—or Sony televisions.

Indeed, there was nothing in the principles of quality control to disabuse them of the idea that quality was merely something that could hurt a company if ignored; that added quality was the designer's business—a matter, perhaps, of chrome and push buttons.

The beginnings of strategic quality management cannot be dated precisely because no single book or article marks its inception.

But even more than in consumer electronics and cars, the volatile market in semiconductors provides a telling example of change.

In March 1980, Richard W. Anderson, general manager of Hewlett-Packard's Data Systems Division, reported that after testing 300,000 16K RAM chips from three U.S. and three Japanese manufacturers, Hewlett-Packard had discovered wide disparities in quality.

At incoming inspection, the Japanese chips had a failure rate of zero; the comparable rate for the three U.S. manufacturers was between 11 and 19 failures per 1,000.

After 1,000 hours of use, the failure rate of the Japanese chips was between 1 and 2 per 1,000; usable U.S. chips failed up to 27 times per thousand.

Several U.S. semiconductor companies reacted to the news impulsively, complaining that the Japanese were sending only their best components to the all-important U.S. market.

The most perceptive market analysts, however, noted how differences in quality coincided with the rapid ascendancy of Japanese chip manufacturers.

In a few years the Japanese had gone from a standing start to significant market shares in both the 16K and 64K chip markets.

Their message—intentional or not—was that quality could be a potent strategic weapon.

U.S. semiconductor manufacturers got the message.

In 16K chips the quality gap soon closed.

And in industries as diverse as machine tools and radial tires, each of which had seen its position erode in the face of Japanese competition, there has been a new seriousness about quality too.

But how to translate seriousness into action?

Managers who are now determined to compete on quality have been thrown back on the old questions: How much quality is enough?

What does it take to look at quality from the customer's vantage point?

To achieve quality gains, I believe, managers need a new way of thinking, a conceptual bridge to the consumer's vantage point.

Obviously, market studies acquire a new importance in this context, as does a careful review of competitors' products.

One thing is certain: high quality means pleasing consumers, not just protecting them from annoyances.

Product designers, in turn, should shift their attention from prices at the time of purchase to life cycle costs that include expenditures on service and maintenance—the customer's total costs.

Even consumer complaints play a new role because they provide a valuable source of product information.

But managers have to take a more preliminary step—a crucial one, however obvious it may appear.

They must first develop a clear vocabulary with which to discuss quality as strategy.

They must break down the word quality into manageable parts.

Only then can they define the quality niches in which to compete.

I propose eight critical dimensions or categories of quality that can serve as a framework for strategic analysis: performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality.2

Some of these are always mutually reinforcing; some are not.

A product or service can rank high on one dimension of quality and low on another—indeed, an improvement in one may be achieved only at the expense of another.

It is precisely this interplay that makes strategic quality management possible; the challenge to managers is to compete on selected dimensions.

Of course, performance refers to a product's primary operating characteristics.

For an automobile, performance would include traits like acceleration, handling, cruising speed, and comfort; for a television set, performance means sound and picture clarity, color, and the ability to receive distant stations.

In service businesses—say, fast food and airlines—performance often means prompt service.

Because this dimension of quality involves measurable attributes, brands can usually be ranked objectively on individual aspects of performance.

Overall performance rankings, however, are more difficult to develop, especially when they involve benefits that not every consumer needs.

A power shovel with a capacity of 100 cubic yards per hour will "outperform" one with a capacity of 10 cubic yards per hour.

Suppose, however, that the two shovels possessed the identical capacity—60 cubic yards per hour—but achieved it differently: one with a 1-cubic-yard bucket operating at 60 cycles per hour, the other with a 2-cubic-yard bucket operating at 30 cycles per hour.

The capacities of the shovels would then be the same, but the shovel with the larger bucket could handle massive boulders while the shovel with the smaller bucket could perform precision work.

The "superior performer" depends entirely on the task.

Some cosmetics wearers judge quality by a product's resistance to smudging; others, with more sensitive skin, assess it by how well it leaves skin irritation-free.

A 100-watt light bulb provides greater candlepower than a 60-watt bulb, yet few customers would regard the difference as a measure of quality.

The bulbs simply belong to different performance classes.

So the question of whether performance differences are quality differences may depend on circumstantial preferences—but preferences based on functional requirements, not taste.

Some performance standards are based on subjective preferences, but the preferences are so universal that they have the force of an objective standard.

The quietness of an automobile's ride is usually viewed as a direct reflection of its quality.

Some people like a dimmer room, but who wants a noisy car?

Similar thinking can be applied to features, a second dimension of quality that is often a secondary aspect of performance.

Features are the "bells and whistles" of products and services, those characteristics that supplement their basic functioning.

Examples include free drinks on a plane, permanent-press cycles on a washing machine, and automatic tuners on a color television set.

The line separating primary performance characteristics from secondary features is often difficult to draw.

What is crucial, again, is that features involve objective and measurable attributes; objective individual needs, not prejudices, affect their translation into quality differences.

To many customers, of course, superior quality is less a reflection of the availability of particular features than of the total number of options available.

Often, choice is quality: buyers may wish to customize or personalize their purchases.

Fidelity Investments and other mutual fund operators have pursued this more "flexible" approach.

By offering their clients a wide range of funds covering such diverse fields as health care, technology, and energy—and by then encouraging clients to shift savings among these—they have virtually tailored investment portfolios.

Employing the latest in flexible manufacturing technology, Allen-Bradley customizes starter motors for its buyers without having to price its products prohibitively.

Fine furniture stores offer their customers countless variations in fabric and color.

Such strategies impose heavy demands on operating managers; they are an aspect of quality likely to grow in importance with the perfection of flexible manufacturing technology.

This dimension reflects the probability of a product malfunctioning or failing within a specified time period.

Among the most common measures of reliability are the mean time to first failure, the mean time between failures, and the failure rate per unit time.

Because these measures require a product to be in use for a specified period, they are more relevant to durable goods than to products and services that are consumed instantly.

Reliability normally becomes more important to consumers as downtime and maintenance become more expensive.

Farmers, for example, are especially sensitive to downtime during the short harvest season.

Reliable equipment can mean the difference between a good year and spoiled crops.

But consumers in other markets are more attuned than ever to product reliability too.

Computers and copying machines certainly compete on this basis.

And recent market research shows that, especially for young women, reliability has become an automobile's most desired attribute.

Nor is the government, our biggest single consumer, immune.

After seeing its expenditures for major weapons repair jump from $7.4 billion in fiscal year 1980 to $14.9 billion in fiscal year 1985, the Department of Defense has begun cracking down on contractors whose weapons fail frequently in the field.

A related dimension of quality is conformance, or the degree to which a product's design and operating characteristics meet established standards.

This dimension owes the most to the traditional approaches to quality pioneered by experts like Juran.

All products and services involve specifications of some sort.

When new designs or models are developed, dimensions are set for parts and purity standards for materials.

These specifications are normally expressed as a target or "center"; deviance from the center is permitted within a specified range.

Because this approach to conformance equates good quality with operating inside a tolerance band, there is little interest in whether specifications have been met exactly.

For the most part, dispersion within specification limits is ignored.

One drawback of this approach is the problem of "tolerance stack-up": when two or more parts are to be fit together, the size of their tolerances often determines how well they will match.

Should one part fall at a lower limit of its specification, and a matching part at its upper limit, a tight fit is unlikely.

Even if the parts are rated acceptable initially, the link between them is likely to wear more quickly than one made from parts whose dimensions have been centered more exactly.

To address this problem, a more imaginative approach to conformance has emerged.

It is closely associated with Japanese manufacturers and the work of Genichi Taguchi, a prizewinning Japanese statistician.

Taguchi begins with the idea of "loss function," a measure of losses from the time a product is shipped.

(These losses include warranty costs, nonrepeating customers, and other problems resulting from performance failure.)

Taguchi then compares such losses to two alternative approaches to quality: on the one hand, simple conformance to specifications, and on the other, a measure of the degree to which parts or products diverge from the ideal target or center.

He demonstrates that "tolerance stack-up" will be worse—more costly—when the dimensions of parts are more distant from the center than when they cluster around it, even if some parts fall outside the tolerance band entirely.

According to Taguchi's approach, production process 1 in the Exhibit is better even though some items fall beyond specification limits.

Traditional approaches favor production process 2.

The challenge for quality managers is obvious.

Exhibit Two approaches to conformance Source: L.P. Sullivan, "Reducing Variability: A New Approach to Quality," Quality Progress, July 1984, p. 16.

Incidentally, the two most common measures of failure in conformance—for Taguchi and everyone else—are defect rates in the factory and, once a product is in the hands of the customer, the incidence of service calls.

But these measures neglect other deviations from standard, like misspelled labels or shoddy construction, that do not lead to service or repair.

In service businesses, measures of conformance normally focus on accuracy and timeliness and include counts of processing errors, unanticipated delays, and other frequent mistakes.

A measure of product life, durability has both economic and technical dimensions.

Technically, durability can be defined as the amount of use one gets from a product before it deteriorates.

After so many hours of use, the filament of a light bulb burns up and the bulb must be replaced.

Economists call such products "one-hoss shays" (after the carriage in the Oliver Wendell Holmes poem that was designed by the deacon to last a hundred years, and whose parts broke down simultaneously at the end of the century).

In other cases, consumers must weigh the expected cost, in both dollars and personal inconvenience, of future repairs against the investment and operating expenses of a newer, more reliable model.

Durability, then, may be defined as the amount of use one gets from a product before it breaks down and replacement is preferable to continued repair.

This approach to durability has two important implications.

First, it suggests that durability and reliability are closely linked.

A product that often fails is likely to be scrapped earlier than one that is more reliable; repair costs will be correspondingly higher and the purchase of a competitive brand will look that much more desirable.

Because of this linkage, companies sometimes try to reassure customers by offering lifetime guarantees on their products, as 3M has done with its videocassettes.

Second, this approach implies that durability figures should be interpreted with care.

An increase in product life may not be the result of technical improvements or the use of longer-lived materials.

Rather, the underlying economic environment simply may have changed.

For example, the expected life of an automobile rose during the last decade—it now averages 14 years—mainly because rising gasoline prices and a weak economy reduced the average number of miles driven per year.

Still, durability varies widely among brands.

In 1981, estimated product lives for major home appliances ranged from 9.9 years (Westinghouse) to 13.2 years (Frigidaire) for refrigerators, 5.8 years (Gibson) to 18 years (Maytag) for clothes washers, 6.6 years (Montgomery Ward) to 13.5 years (Maytag) for dryers, and 6 years (Sears) to 17 years (Kirby) for

This wide dispersion suggests that durability is a potentially fertile area for further quality differentiation.

A sixth dimension of quality is serviceability, or the speed, courtesy, competence, and ease of repair.

Consumers are concerned not only about a product breaking down but also about the time before service is restored, the timeliness with which service appointments are kept, the nature of dealings with service personnel, and the frequency with which service calls or repairs fail to correct outstanding problems.

In those cases where problems are not immediately resolved and complaints are filed, a company's complaint-handling procedures are also likely to affect customers' ultimate evaluation of product and service quality.

Some of these variables reflect differing personal standards of acceptable service.

Others can be measured quite objectively.

Responsiveness is typically measured by the mean time to repair, while technical competence is reflected in the incidence of multiple service calls required to correct a particular problem.

Because most consumers equate rapid repair and reduced downtime with higher quality, these elements of serviceability are less subject to personal interpretation than are those involving evaluations of courtesy or standards of professional behavior.

Even reactions to downtime, however, can be quite complex.

In certain environments, rapid response becomes critical only after certain thresholds have been reached.

During harvest season, farmers generally accept downtime of one to six hours on harvesting equipment, such as combines, with little resistance.

As downtime increases, they become anxious; beyond eight hours of downtime they become frantic and frequently go to great lengths to continue harvesting even if it means purchasing or leasing additional equipment.

In markets like this, superior service can be a powerful selling tool.

Caterpillar guarantees delivery of repair parts anywhere in the world within 48 hours; a competitor offers the free loan of farm equipment during critical periods should its customers' machines break down.

Customers may remain dissatisfied even after completion of repairs.

How these complaints are handled is important to a company's reputation for quality and service.

Eventually, profitability is likely to be affected as well.

A 1976 consumer survey found that among households that initiated complaints to resolve problems, more than 40% were not satisfied with the results.

Understandably, the degree of satisfaction with complaint resolution closely correlated with consumers' willingness to repurchase the offending brands.4

Companies differ widely in their approaches to complaint handling and in the importance they attach to this element of serviceability.

Some do their best to resolve complaints; others use legal gimmicks, the silent treatment, and similar ploys to rebuff dissatisfied customers.

Recently, General Electric, Pillsbury, Procter & Gamble, Polaroid, Whirlpool, Johnson & Johnson, and other companies have sought to preempt consumer dissatisfaction by installing toll-free telephone hot lines to their customer relations departments.

The final two dimensions of quality are the most subjective.

Aesthetics—how a product looks, feels, sounds, tastes, or smells—is clearly a matter of personal judgment and a reflection of individual preference.

Nevertheless, there appear to be some patterns in consumers' rankings of products on the basis of taste.

A recent study of quality in 33 food categories, for example, found that high quality was most often associated with "rich and full flavor, tastes natural, tastes fresh, good aroma, and looks appetizing."5

The aesthetics dimension differs from subjective criteria pertaining to "performance"—the quiet car engine, say—in that aesthetic choices are not nearly universal.

Not all people prefer "rich and full" flavor or even agree on what it means.

Companies therefore have to search for a niche.

On this dimension of quality, it is impossible to please everyone.

Consumers do not always have complete information about a product's or service's attributes; indirect measures may be their only basis for comparing brands.

A product's durability, for example, can seldom be observed directly; it usually must be inferred from various tangible and intangible aspects of the product.

In such circumstances, images, advertising, and brand names—inferences about quality rather than the reality itself—can be critical.

For this reason, both Honda—which makes cars in Marysville, Ohio—and Sony—which builds color televisions in San Diego—have been reluctant to publicize that their products are "made in America."

Reputation is the primary stuff of perceived quality.

Its power comes from an unstated analogy: that the quality of products today is similar to the quality of products yesterday, or the quality of goods in a new product line is similar to the quality of a company's established products.

In the early 1980s, Maytag introduced a new line of dishwashers.

Needless to say, salespeople immediately emphasized the product's reliability—not yet proven—because of the reputation of Maytag's clothes washers and dryers.

This completes the list of the eight dimensions of quality.

The most traditional notions—conformance and reliability—remain important, but they are subsumed within a broader strategic framework.

A company's first challenge is to use this framework to explore the opportunities it has to distinguish its products from another company's wares.

The quality of an automobile tire may reflect its tread-wear rate, handling, traction in dangerous driving conditions, rolling resistance (i.e., impact on gas mileage), noise levels, resistance to punctures, or appearance.

High-quality furniture may be distinguished by its uniform finish, an absence of surface flaws, reinforced frames, comfort, or superior design.

Even the quality of a less tangible product like computer software can be evaluated in multiple dimensions.

These dimensions include reliability, ease of maintenance, match with users' needs, integrity (the extent to which unauthorized access can be controlled), and portability (the ease with which a program can be transferred from one hardware or software environment to another).

A company need not pursue all eight dimensions simultaneously.

In fact, that is seldom possible unless it intends to charge unreasonably high prices.

Technological limitations may impose a further constraint.

In some cases, a product or service can be improved in one dimension of quality only if it becomes worse in another.

Cray Research, a manufacturer of supercomputers, has faced particularly difficult choices of this sort.

According to the company's chairman, if a supercomputer doesn't fail every month or so, it probably wasn't built for maximum speed; in pursuit of higher speed, Cray has deliberately sacrificed reliability.

In entering U.S. markets, Japanese manufacturers often emphasize their products' reliability and conformance while downplaying options and features.

The superior "fits and finishes" and low repair rates of Japanese cars are well known; less often recognized are their poor safety records and low resistance to corrosion.

Tandem Computers has based its business on superior reliability.

For computer users that find down-time intolerable, like telephone companies and utilities, Tandem has devised a fail-safe system: two processors working in parallel and linked by software that shifts responsibility between the two if an important component or subsystem fails.

The result, in an industry already well-known for quality products, has been spectacular corporate growth.

In 1984, after less than 10 years in business, Tandem's annual sales topped $500 million.

Not long ago, New York's Chemical Bank upgraded its services for collecting payments for corporations.

Managers had first conducted a user survey indicating that what customers wanted most was rapid response to queries about account status.

After it installed a computerized system to answer customers' calls, Chemical, which banking consumers had ranked fourth in quality in the industry, jumped to first.

In the piano business, Steinway & Sons has long been the quality leader.

Its instruments are known for their even voicing (the evenness of character and timbre in each of the 88 notes on the keyboard), the sweetness of their registers, the duration of their tone, their long lives, and even their fine cabinet work.

Each piano is built by hand and is distinctive in sound and style.

Despite these advantages, Steinway recently has been challenged by Yamaha, a Japanese manufacturer that has built a strong reputation for quality in a relatively short time.

Yamaha has done so by emphasizing reliability and conformance, two quality dimensions that are low on Steinway's list.

These examples confirm that companies can pursue a selective quality niche.

In fact, they may have no other choice, especially if competitors have established reputations for a certain kind of excellence.

Few products rank high on all eight dimensions of quality.

Those that do—Cross pens, Rolex watches, Rolls-Royce automobiles—require consumers to pay the cost of skilled workmanship.

A final word, not about strategic opportunities, but about the worst strategic mistakes.

The first is direct confrontation with an industry's leader.

As with Yamaha vs. Steinway, it is far preferable to nullify the leader's advantage in a particular niche while avoiding the risk of retaliation.

Moreover, a common error is to introduce dimensions of quality that are unimportant to consumers.

When deregulation unlocked the market for residential telephones, a number of manufacturers, including AT&T, assumed that customers equated quality with a wide range of expensive features.

Fancy telephones sold poorly while durable, reliable, and easy-to-operate sets gained large market shares.

Shoddy market research often results in neglect of quality dimensions that are critical to consumers.

Using outdated surveys, car companies overlooked how important reliability and conformance were becoming in the 1970s; ironically, these companies failed consumers on the very dimensions that were key targets of traditional approaches to quality control.

It is often a mistake to stick with old quality measures when the external environment has changed.

A major telecommunications company had always evaluated its quality by measuring timeliness—the amount of time it took to provide a dial tone, to connect a call, or to be connected to an operator.

More sophisticated market surveys, conducted in anticipation of the industry's deregulation, found that consumers were not really concerned about call connection time; consumers assumed that this would be more or less acceptable.

They were more concerned with the clarity of transmission and the degree of static on the line.

On these measures, the company found it was well behind its competitors.

In an industry like semiconductor manufacturing equipment, Japanese machines generally require less set-up time; they break down less often and have few problems meeting their specified performance levels.

These are precisely the traits desired by most buyers.

As one U.S. plant manager put it: "Our equipment is more advanced, but Japanese equipment is more developed."

Quality measures may be inadequate in less obvious ways.

Some measures are too limited; they fail to capture aspects of quality that are important for competitive success.

Singapore International Airlines, a carrier with a reputation for excellent service, saw its market share decline in the early 1980s.

The company dismissed quality problems as the cause of its difficulties because data on service complaints showed steady improvement during the period.

Only later, after SIA solicited consumer responses, did managers see the weakness of their former measures.

Relative declines in service had indeed been responsible for the loss of market share.

Complaint counts had failed to register problems because the proportion of passengers who wrote complaint letters was small—they were primarily Europeans and U.S. citizens rather than Asians, the largest percentage of SIA passengers.

SIA also had failed to capture data about its competitors' service improvements.

The pervasiveness of these errors is difficult to determine.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many U.S. companies lack hard data and are thus more vulnerable than they need be.

One survey found that 65% of executives thought that consumers could readily name—without help—a good quality brand in a big-ticket category like major home appliances.

But when the question was actually posed to consumers, only 16% could name a brand for small appliances, and only 23% for large appliances.6

Are U.S. executives that ill-informed about consumers' perceptions?

The answer is not likely to be reassuring.

Managers have to stop thinking about quality merely as a narrow effort to gain control of the production process, and start thinking more rigorously about consumers' needs and preferences.

Quality is not simply a problem to be solved; it is a competitive opportunity.

1. James F. Haplin, Zero Defects (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 15.

2. This framework first appeared, in a preliminary form, in my article "What Does 'Product Quality' Really Mean?" Sloan Management Review, Fall 1984.

3. Roger B. Yepsen, Jr., ed., The Durability Factor (Emmaus, Penn: Rodale Press, 1982), p. 190.

4. TARP, Consumer Complaint Handling in America: Final Report (Springfield, Va.: National Technical Information Service, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1979).

5. P. Greg Bonner and Richard Nelson, "Product Attributes and Perceived Quality: Foods," in Perceived Quality, ed. Jacob Jacoby and Jerry C. Olson (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, D.C. Heath, 1985), p. 71.

6. Consumer Network, Inc., Brand Quality Perceptions (Philadelphia: Consumer Network, August 1983), p. 17 ad 50–51

A version of this article appeared in the November 1987 issue of Harvard Business Review.

David A. Garvin is the C. Roland Christensen Professor at Harvard Business School.

##### This article is about MARKET RESEARCH

Quality is the ability of a product or service to meet and exceed customer expectations. Customers' requirements determine the quality goals. It is almost always listed first, presumably because poor quality often results in bad business. Quality is the result of the efficiency of the entire production process formed of men, material, and machinery.
 Even though quality is now seen as a competitive advantage, US business organizations in the 1970s tended to focus more on cost and productivity. That approach led to a major share of the US market being captured by Japanese business organizations, which onces again proves that in order to be successful an organization has to focus on all three QCD dimensions together.


The game has experienced an increasing player count as of recent, reaching more than 1500 players on at a single time by May 2019.

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"Space Station 13" got attention from various video game journalism websites over the years.


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The museum is housed in the old Bath House building which was opened in 1908 and is noted as the first major investment in the New Zealand tourism industry by the government

(meta data) TITLE: The Bath House Story - Rotorua Museum

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The Bath House, which today houses Rotorua Museum, was once an famous spa which offered therapeutic treatments to visitors from all over the world.

Water from nearby thermal springs was piped to private bathrooms and larger Aix-douche massage rooms.

There were also a number of deep pools where chronic disorders were treated.

The north wing accommodated male patients, while women were treated in the south wing.

At its height the spa gave 60,000 to 80,000 baths annually and about 30,000 special treatments.

There is little left of the once state-of-the-art spa treatment equipment; most was destroyed when the baths closed in 1966.

The people of Rotorua are indebted to Ngāti Whakaue for the gift of land on which the Bath House now stands.

On 22 November 1880, Judge FD Fenton met with 47 Māori leaders to discuss a proposal supporting the creation of a township.

Contained within the agreement was a clause setting aside thermal springs "Hei oranga mō ngā iwi katoa o te Ao" – for the benefit of the people of the world.

This far-sighted and generous gift of 50 acres along the southern shores of Lake Rotorua demonstrated the goodwill of the original landowners, Ngati Whakaue.

The area, formerly known as the Sanatorium Reserve, is today named Government Gardens.

The opening of the Bath House coincided with a visit to Rotorua by Rear-Admiral Sperry of the American Atlantic Fleet and 200 of his officers.

The magnificent Elizabethan-style Bath House building is a monument to the New Zealand Government's first major investment in the tourism industry.

With its half-timbered construction, gables, towers, grand staircase, and luxurious treatment facilities the Government hoped to tempt wealthy northern hemisphere patrons to travel far from home to the 'Great South Seas Spa'.

"The stream of travellers has certainly set towards New Zealand, and the establishment of up-to-date Government baths will no doubt make Rotorua world-famous and be the means of attracting many thousands more visitors yearly."

TE Donne, Superintendent, Department of Tourism and Health Resorts, Rotorua, 1908.

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The Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa is a local museum and art gallery located in Rotorua, Bay of Plenty, North Island, New Zealand.


On April 9, 2013, Syfy renewed "Haven" for a fourth season of thirteen episodes, which premiered on September 2013.

(meta data) TITLE: Haven - Season 4 - Production Begins - Press Release

### Haven - Season 4 - Production Begins - Press Release

SYFY'S HIT SERIES HAVEN BEGINS PRODUCTION ON SEASON 4 IN HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA

– Startling new mysteries and secrets are in the works as Syfy's hit series Haven goes into production today, May 8, on an all-new 13 episode Season 4 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

When Haven premieres this October, Colin Ferguson (Eureka) returns to Syfy playing William, a handsome mysterious stranger, whose secret agenda leads him to Audrey (Emily Rose).

Season 4 of Haven picks up six months after the devastating events of the Season 3 cliffhanger in which the town was pummeled by a violent meteor storm.

Audrey and Duke (Eric Balfour) vanished into thin air leaving an injured Nathan (Lucas Bryant) marooned in Haven.

During its third season, Haven averaged 2.3 million total viewers, 1.1 million Adults 25-54 and 901,000 Adults 18-49.

It was the #1 cable drama during its Friday night at 10 PM timeslot (based on Live + 7 data) in Adults 18-49, Adults 25-54 and total viewers.

Ferguson recently starred as the lovable Sherriff Jack Carter on the long-running hit Syfy series Eureka.

Ferguson was also a producer on the series and directed several episodes.

Ferguson's many feature film credits include Because I Said So, Rowing Through and The Opposite of Sex.

He has also starred in a number of movies for television and was a regular on the NBC remake of the hit British comedy series Coupling and the sitcom Then Came You.

His many guest-starring roles include CSI, Malcolm in the Middle, Crossing Jordan and Becker.

Haven, based on the novella, The Colorado Kid, from renowned author Stephen King, follows former FBI agent Audrey Parker, who becomes a cop in the small town of Haven, Maine, and soon discovers the town's many secrets – which also hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of her lost past.

From leading independent studio Entertainment One (eOne), Haven is co-commissioned by Shaw Media in Canada and globally via Universal Networks International (UNI).

The creative team behind Haven includes executive producers John Morayniss (Klondike, Rogue) from eOne Television and David MacLeod (Legends of the Fall, The Ray Bradbury Theater) of Big Motion Pictures, who are joined by Lloyd Segan, Shawn Piller, Scott Shepherd (Stephen King's The Dead Zone, Greek) of Piller/Segan/Shepherd and Matt McGuinness (Journeyman, Dark Blue) as well as Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn (Stephen King's The Dead Zone), who also developed the series.

Haven is produced by Entertainment One and Big Motion Pictures in association with Piller/Segan/Shepherd and airs on Syfy in the US, Showcase in Canada and internationally on UNI's multiple Syfy Universal channels.

Entertainment One controls the worldwide distribution rights to the one-hour series and concluded a deal with Germany's Tele München Group (TMG) for the television rights in Continental Europe.

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# Yasuhiro Wada On How Happy Birthdays Is More Game-Like, And Why He Left Grasshopper

By Alistair Wong . April 14, 2018 . 3:30pm

In an interview with 4Gamer, Bokujou Monogatari creator and Happy Birthdays developer Yasuhiro Wada talked about some "game-like" changes made from Birthdays the Beginning to Happy Birthdays, and later on talked about why he left Grasshopper Manufacture to create Toybox.

So as a 'renewal', what sort of elements were added?

Earlier, you mentioned making things easier to understand…

Yasuhiro Wada: "In Birthdays the Beginning, I wanted to make something that was very simple, but rather than a game, if ended up feeling more like a simulator.

That is great for people who enjoy things playing out in front of them, but I received requests and feedback for more game-like elements.

That's why this time clear objectives have been provided."

4Gamer: And that is the Happy Star system, then.

In the previous game, by picking up randomly spawned items, it would drastically change the environment in some way, but this time it has all been changed to "Skills".

Star Energy is required to use Skills, and by progressing in the game, it slowly builds up."

Later on, Wada discussed the addition of a Navigation System to the game which tells players the exact requirements to get particular creature species, and the different mindset that the current generation of gamers have compared to his more old-school way of thinking.

I remember needing to go through a lot of trial-and-error in Birthdays the Beginning.

Wada: "The game was designed that way not out of malicious intent, but so that players would not be confused by too much information at once, which was why as much was hidden as possible.

However, in the end it just led to the difficulty of the game increasing.

With the Navigation System, you are able to see all the information needed for particular living creatures to be born."

So it's now easier to aim for particular creatures.

Still, I feel that it might be too forgiving now.

Isn't there fun in finding out the particular requirements for yourself?

I felt the same way, and in the previous game, I couldn't get out of that particular way of thinking.

However, that might be an outdated way of looking at things.

The goal of this game is to have as many people play the game as possible, so in order to better match the tastes of current gamers, all the information is displayed.

This is because the core part of the game isn't in that aspect, and so it's not like the game will be less fun as a result."

Finally, Wada revealed a bit about why he left both Marvelous and Grasshopper Manufacture to create Toybox.

4Gamer: What caused you to leave Marvelous?

Wada: "While I felt that game creation was my job, Marvelous operates on a hierarchy of experience, and gradually I was forced to take a more managing role.

Then, I was completely cut off from developing games myself, and was stuck in a dilemma.

During this situation, Goichi Suda from Grasshopper Manufacture invited me to make games together, and I changed companies."

4Gamer: That's right, before Toybox, you worked at Grasshopper Manufacture.

Around that period of time, Grasshopper was making several big titles like Shadow of the Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw.

Although I changed companies in order to go hands-on with development, with the abundance of creators already at Grasshopper I ended up taking a managerial role."

4Gamer: So you couldn't develop games like you wanted to.

Wada: "With that experience, I realized that at my age and with my resume I would end up taking a managerial role no matter what.

Yet I still wanted to make games, so I thought that the only way would be to create my own company, which we now know as Toybox."

It is interesting to contrast Wada's experience in hindsight with his statements from back when he worked at Grasshopper, in an interview with Siliconera back in 2010.

He also talked about his game creation philosophy in an Ask-Me-Anything on Reddit in 2016.

Happy Birthdays releases in North America on June 5, 2018 for Nintendo Switch.

It releases in Europe on June 8, and a few months earlier in Japan on March 29.

Read more stories about Happy Birthdays & Nintendo Switch on Siliconera.

Birthdays the Beginning Heading To Switch In Japan as Happy Birthdays On March 29Happy

Birthdays Adds New Creatures, New "Star" Item To Trade For Useful Items And SkillsHappy Birthdays Will Come To Life On Switch June 5 In North America And June 8 For EuropeHappy Birthdays Makes Its Way To Nintendo Switch In North America And Europe In 2018

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Grasshopper Manufacture was also responsible for the Nintendo DS game "Contact", the Wii game "No More Heroes" and its sequel "No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle", and "Shadows of the Damned". The company is headed by Goichi Suda, also known as Suda51, and is noted for its original and imaginative titles - ones that are also fraught with financial risk. Potential losses are often made up by the development of games based on popular anime franchises, such as "Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked", "Blood+: One Night Kiss", and "Rebuild of Evangelion: Sound Impact".
 In May 2007, Suda announced during a speech at the 2007 Game Developers Conference that Grasshopper was at the time working on three titles for the Wii, two of which have now been released: "No More Heroes" and "Fatal Frame IV". There is no information on the status of the third Wii game in development then.
 Grasshopper was said to be working on an Xbox 360 title, and have presented a concept for a PlayStation 3 game called "Kurayami", a non-linear action adventure inspired by the worrying and confused universe of the Czech writer Franz Kafka, whom Goichi Suda admires. This was later cancelled and reincorporated ideas were put into the game "Shadows of the Damned".
 In 2010, Yashuhiro Wada joined Grasshopper Manufacture as COO.


Produced by Warner Bros., with actual film production done by Studio Swan, the film was directed by Keishi Ōtomo and stars Takeru Satoh (of "Kamen Rider Den-O" fame) as Kenshin, Munetaka Aoki as Sanosuke Sagara  and Emi Takei as Kaoru.

(meta data) TITLE: Emi Takei to Play Live-Action Rurouni Kenshin's Kaoru - Interest - Anime News Network

(meta data) COPYRIGHT: Copyright (C) 2006 Anime News Network

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Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

# Interest Emi Takei to Play Live-Action Rurouni Kenshin's Kaoru

17-year-old shares same age as heroine in Nobuhiro Watsuki's samurai manga

17-year-old actress Emi Takei has been cast to play the heroine Kaoru Kamiya in next year's live-action film adaptation of Nobuhiro Watsuki's Rurouni Kenshin samurai manga.

22-year-old actor Takeru Satoh (Kamen Rider Den-O, Rookies, Beck, Ryōmaden) has already been cast as the title samurai himself.

Keishi Ōtomo will direct Satoh on this new film, just as he did in last year's NHK historical television series Ryōmaden.

Ōtomo said, "Takei is going to be a big-name actress, without a doubt.

She has a innocent-looking face, but she is determined in her work."

Ōtomo also noted that he could not think of any other actress who is Kaoru's age at the beginning of the story (17 years old) who can tackle the role.

Takei herself added that she is very delighted to be part of a live-action adaptation of a comic that so many adore, and she will do her best.

Warner Brothers Pictures Japan is producing the film, and filming is slated to begin this month.

Takei starred in the live-action television adaptation of Kaori Akiyama's Asukō March! -Kenritsu Asuka Kōgyō Kōkō Kōshinkyoku- manga for women this past spring.

Next year, she will also star alongside Makoto Taiga in the fourth live-action film adaptation of Ai to Makoto (Ai and Makoto), a romance manga by influential 1970s creator Ikki Kajiwara (Ashita no Joe, Kyojin no Hoshi, Tiger Mask).

In a survey conducted by Goo on who should play Evangelion's Rei in live-action, she placed 10th.

this article has been modified since it was originally posted;

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