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A story from the time recounts that Piero Soderino, the head of the powerful Florentine Republic, even told the famously irascible Michelangelo that David's nos

A story from the time recounts that Piero Soderino, the head of the powerful Florentine Republic, even told the famously irascible Michelangelo that David's nose was much too large. Michelangelo then hid some marble dust in his hand, climbed back up his ladder and pretended to do some more "chiseling" on the offending proboscis. While he did so, he let some marble dust fall from his hand. The pompous Soderino was fooled – he examined the unchanged nose and announced it was much improved and far more "life-like." http://www.globusjourneys.com/travel-stories/italy/michelangelos-david/ http://www.globusjourneys.com/travel-stories/italy/michelang...

fizgig 12y ago
Or how Hitchcock had the ratings board watch his famous Psycho shower death scene a second time unchanged and get the thumbs-up when it didn't pass the first viewing. I'm sure history is sprinkled with many such interesting stories.
- Eric_WVGG 12y ago
  Trey Parker and Matt Stone did the opposite with the South Park movie. Each time the MPAA objected to specific instances of curse words, they returned another version with those specifics removed but more added elsewhere. The final product was much filthier than even they intended.
NickPollard 12y ago
Another version I've heard of this is with film censorship - apparently when Hitchcock made Psycho, the film censor (I think in the UK - the BBFC) wouldn't give the film a certificate because it was too extreme for the era - too much nudity, too much violence - and suggested a few cuts to just trim back some of the offending shots. Hitchock said of course he would, took the film back, and sat on it for a couple of weeks. He later sent back the 'fixed' version, and the censor was much happier with the 'changes' and certified it for release.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  This works for submissions to the App Store as well.
  - ohitsdom 12y ago
    Any stories with this happening? Seems unlikely to me because you can't be sure the same person is reviewing your app. Also developers seem to rarely get specific feedback for a rejection.
- loudmax 12y ago
  There is a story that when the animators of Avatar The Last Airbender were working on the Beach episode, they knew that if they drew the outfits the way they wanted, they would be told to tone it down. So they drew everyone in outfits far too revealing for a children's program. When, as predicted, they were told to draw something more conservative they went ahead and animated the scenes the way they originally envisioned them. The censors, satisfied that they had done their job, accepted the revised scenes.
  - ibmthrowaway271 12y ago
    Works for planning applications in the UK too. Building company wants to build a 12 storey block of apartments somewhere, but the locals will object to pretty much anything. Initial planning application goes in for 42 storey block. Locals up in arms demanding it be reduced. Big protest campaign launched. Delays and then a revised planning application for 28 storeys. Outrage (but less vociferous). More delays and eventually a revised planning application for 12 storeys. Little complaint, planning application successful.
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    Sounds like what TVTropes calls "getting crap past the radar".
- omegaham 12y ago
  Matt Parker and Trey Stone, the creators of South Park, did the exact same thing when making Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. Put completely ridiculous over-the-top NC-17 stuff in there, get it rejected for those parts, and keep the iffy stuff.
TallGuyShort 12y ago
Not a huge Steve Jobs fan, but I had a professor who had worked as a designer under Steve Jobs and tried something similar. Steve insisted that a new mouse needed to be just a fraction of a millimetre slimmer so a person's palm was lower and closer to the work surface. They figured he was being an unreasonable "delicate genius" and returned a few days later with the identical mouse and claimed they had reworked it to be a little slimmer. He held it and immediately said they had done nothing and the size was identical to before. They took it and reworked it to actually be about half a millimetre slimmer, showed it to him, and he said it was perfect.
- masklinn 12y ago
  Yes it's a move which works when people demand changes in order to leave their mark or to be seen as "doing something"[0], it doesn't work in the case of people demanding changes because they actually want these changes. [0] an attitude I find myself unthinkingly adopting when doing reviews.
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    i have the guilts reviewing work of non native english speakers and asking them to rename functions after review. hard to ask for it without it seeming completely petty, particularly when everything else is perfect. it does represent a minor improvement.
    - acdha 12y ago
      It definitely requires some tact and thought first. The angle I like to focus on is whether something will actively confuse future maintainers. If it's an internal method and the name is odd but not misleading, it's probably not worth raising at a code review or maybe even privately
      - throwawayaway 12y ago
        yeah it's definitely not one for the rooftops with a megaphone anyway.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
This is something my friends did on a software engineering class. They were tasked to draw a set of complicated diagrams modeling a software project. When they gave the assignment, the PhD that was grading them said it's wrong and needs a lot of corrections and told them to come back next week with a fixed version. They didn't change anything and just gave the same version again for grading. Instant A.
- estebank 12y ago
  I had a teacher telling us to change a 120 pages long document back and forth three times. The third time we showed her the hardcopies with her revisions and hand waved it away, trying to gaslight saying it wasn't her handwriting(!). Same person saying that the hardcopy we had of the OMG.org specs[1] was wrong (same class, I believe it was a different day) because she wanted Use Case Diagram[2] didn't have arrows denoting directionality (Use Case Diagrams do not have directionality, they just represent interactions). It's one of the two teachers I've ever walked out in the middle of a class in my life. (The other was one in an engineering thesis orientation class where one of the "teachers" said that "everything that could be invented has already been invented". I walked out immediately, followed by a few other people seconds later after some other comment.) [1]: http://www.omg.org/spec/ http://www.omg.org/spec/ [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_Case_Diagram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_Case_Diagram
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Huh, teachers. I had one teaching computer architecture who treated Linda Null's book as a Holy Bible of the course. She liked to correct students by saying "you're wrong, you haven't read Linda Null, go read the book". It was fine until the point when she disagreed with what someone wrote on the test - and when that person has pointed out that it's straight from the book, she shrugged and said, "well, Linda Null is wrong". sigh
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    I think it was somewhere in middle school where I had several teachers who insisted that there had to be corrections made between a rough draft and a final draft of a paper, because thirteen-year-olds were obviously incapable of getting anything right the first time. I would write a paper, save it, introduce a few typos, submit that as the first draft, then submit the original a few days later when the final draft was called for.
JonnieCache 12y ago
There are countless fables about record company executives dropping by the mastering studio to hear the new hit in its finished form. They'd inevitably make some ill-posed request, of the familiar "it needs to pop more!" variety. The wily engineer directs them towards a large and important looking knob, telling them that they are free to dial in as much "pop" as they think the track needs. Of course, they screw up their faces and make minute adjustments, and eventually announce that the sound is now perfect. You all know the punchline. The twist is that every sound engineer also has stories of doing the same thing to themselves by accident.
- bernardom 12y ago
  One of the famous tricks in ops consulting is to disconnect the knobs. Shift A likes this oven temperature, shift B likes that oven temperature, etc.
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    One of the aircraft in the US Presidential fleet, SAM 970, had a fake temperature control knob on the conference room desk. It was installed for then-VP Johnson, who was something of a control freak and who kept coming up to the cockpit to fiddle with the temperature. (The knob actually sent a signal to the pilots, who would adjust the temperature in the general direction that LBJ had tried to adjust it.) Source: learned during my employee training at The Museum of Flight. http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-vc-137b-707-120sam-970-air-force-one http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-vc-137b-707-12...
    - icebraining 12y ago
      Well, that's not exactly fake, it just has a human in the circuit.
      - larrys 12y ago
        Not to mention that obviously Johnson was aware of how the knob worked. And I find that it's funny that people think that a Vice President can't get temperature adjusted to his liking and should or would play games with him. "Oh there he goes again" type of thing. I don't think you get to be in a position of being able to fly a President or Vice President of any country by having an attitude and not being fully respectful of those in power.
ph0rque 12y ago
This is something I admit to doing while driving with my kids at times, when they ask to e.g. turn the volume of music up/down and I think it's just fine the way it is. I'll turn it down a few clicks, then turn it up to what it was before.
- balabaster 12y ago
  Works for dinner too... tell them you're having something they detest for dinner and then gradually dial it back to things that are less detestable and then cook what you were originally going to cook and they'll accept it without complaint :P
modfodder 12y ago
a film editor instructor liked to rag on director's wanting a frame clipped here or lengthened there, arguing they couldn't possibly know when something was a single frame too long or too short. He would solve this by hitting a few keys on the keyboard that effectively did nothing, then show the director the same cut. Inevitably they would always remark how much better it felt, not realizing no change was made.
anigbrowl 12y ago
I forget the name of it, but a pro audio company used to sell a very impressive-looking piece of rack equipment with several imposingly-titled buttons and sliders but which had nothing inside, whose sole function was to serve as a placebo for unwelcome meddlers.

fizgig 12y ago

Or how Hitchcock had the ratings board watch his famous Psycho shower death scene a second time unchanged and get the thumbs-up when it didn't pass the first viewing. I'm sure history is sprinkled with many such interesting stories.

Eric_WVGG 12y ago
Trey Parker and Matt Stone did the opposite with the South Park movie. Each time the MPAA objected to specific instances of curse words, they returned another version with those specifics removed but more added elsewhere. The final product was much filthier than even they intended.

NickPollard 12y ago

Another version I've heard of this is with film censorship - apparently when Hitchcock made Psycho, the film censor (I think in the UK - the BBFC) wouldn't give the film a certificate because it was too extreme for the era - too much nudity, too much violence - and suggested a few cuts to just trim back some of the offending shots. Hitchock said of course he would, took the film back, and sat on it for a couple of weeks. He later sent back the 'fixed' version, and the censor was much happier with the 'changes' and certified it for release.

happyscrappy 12y ago
This works for submissions to the App Store as well.
- ohitsdom 12y ago
  Any stories with this happening? Seems unlikely to me because you can't be sure the same person is reviewing your app. Also developers seem to rarely get specific feedback for a rejection.
loudmax 12y ago
There is a story that when the animators of Avatar The Last Airbender were working on the Beach episode, they knew that if they drew the outfits the way they wanted, they would be told to tone it down. So they drew everyone in outfits far too revealing for a children's program. When, as predicted, they were told to draw something more conservative they went ahead and animated the scenes the way they originally envisioned them. The censors, satisfied that they had done their job, accepted the revised scenes.
- ibmthrowaway271 12y ago
  Works for planning applications in the UK too. Building company wants to build a 12 storey block of apartments somewhere, but the locals will object to pretty much anything. Initial planning application goes in for 42 storey block. Locals up in arms demanding it be reduced. Big protest campaign launched. Delays and then a revised planning application for 28 storeys. Outrage (but less vociferous). More delays and eventually a revised planning application for 12 storeys. Little complaint, planning application successful.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  Sounds like what TVTropes calls "getting crap past the radar".
omegaham 12y ago
Matt Parker and Trey Stone, the creators of South Park, did the exact same thing when making Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. Put completely ridiculous over-the-top NC-17 stuff in there, get it rejected for those parts, and keep the iffy stuff.

TallGuyShort 12y ago

Not a huge Steve Jobs fan, but I had a professor who had worked as a designer under Steve Jobs and tried something similar. Steve insisted that a new mouse needed to be just a fraction of a millimetre slimmer so a person's palm was lower and closer to the work surface. They figured he was being an unreasonable "delicate genius" and returned a few days later with the identical mouse and claimed they had reworked it to be a little slimmer. He held it and immediately said they had done nothing and the size was identical to before. They took it and reworked it to actually be about half a millimetre slimmer, showed it to him, and he said it was perfect.

masklinn 12y ago
Yes it's a move which works when people demand changes in order to leave their mark or to be seen as "doing something"[0], it doesn't work in the case of people demanding changes because they actually want these changes. [0] an attitude I find myself unthinkingly adopting when doing reviews.
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  i have the guilts reviewing work of non native english speakers and asking them to rename functions after review. hard to ask for it without it seeming completely petty, particularly when everything else is perfect. it does represent a minor improvement.
  - acdha 12y ago
    It definitely requires some tact and thought first. The angle I like to focus on is whether something will actively confuse future maintainers. If it's an internal method and the name is odd but not misleading, it's probably not worth raising at a code review or maybe even privately
    - throwawayaway 12y ago
      yeah it's definitely not one for the rooftops with a megaphone anyway.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

This is something my friends did on a software engineering class. They were tasked to draw a set of complicated diagrams modeling a software project. When they gave the assignment, the PhD that was grading them said it's wrong and needs a lot of corrections and told them to come back next week with a fixed version. They didn't change anything and just gave the same version again for grading. Instant A.

estebank 12y ago
I had a teacher telling us to change a 120 pages long document back and forth three times. The third time we showed her the hardcopies with her revisions and hand waved it away, trying to gaslight saying it wasn't her handwriting(!). Same person saying that the hardcopy we had of the OMG.org specs[1] was wrong (same class, I believe it was a different day) because she wanted Use Case Diagram[2] didn't have arrows denoting directionality (Use Case Diagrams do not have directionality, they just represent interactions). It's one of the two teachers I've ever walked out in the middle of a class in my life. (The other was one in an engineering thesis orientation class where one of the "teachers" said that "everything that could be invented has already been invented". I walked out immediately, followed by a few other people seconds later after some other comment.) [1]: http://www.omg.org/spec/ http://www.omg.org/spec/ [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_Case_Diagram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_Case_Diagram
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Huh, teachers. I had one teaching computer architecture who treated Linda Null's book as a Holy Bible of the course. She liked to correct students by saying "you're wrong, you haven't read Linda Null, go read the book". It was fine until the point when she disagreed with what someone wrote on the test - and when that person has pointed out that it's straight from the book, she shrugged and said, "well, Linda Null is wrong". sigh
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  I think it was somewhere in middle school where I had several teachers who insisted that there had to be corrections made between a rough draft and a final draft of a paper, because thirteen-year-olds were obviously incapable of getting anything right the first time. I would write a paper, save it, introduce a few typos, submit that as the first draft, then submit the original a few days later when the final draft was called for.

JonnieCache 12y ago

There are countless fables about record company executives dropping by the mastering studio to hear the new hit in its finished form. They'd inevitably make some ill-posed request, of the familiar "it needs to pop more!" variety. The wily engineer directs them towards a large and important looking knob, telling them that they are free to dial in as much "pop" as they think the track needs. Of course, they screw up their faces and make minute adjustments, and eventually announce that the sound is now perfect. You all know the punchline. The twist is that every sound engineer also has stories of doing the same thing to themselves by accident.

bernardom 12y ago
One of the famous tricks in ops consulting is to disconnect the knobs. Shift A likes this oven temperature, shift B likes that oven temperature, etc.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  One of the aircraft in the US Presidential fleet, SAM 970, had a fake temperature control knob on the conference room desk. It was installed for then-VP Johnson, who was something of a control freak and who kept coming up to the cockpit to fiddle with the temperature. (The knob actually sent a signal to the pilots, who would adjust the temperature in the general direction that LBJ had tried to adjust it.) Source: learned during my employee training at The Museum of Flight. http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-vc-137b-707-120sam-970-air-force-one http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-vc-137b-707-12...
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Well, that's not exactly fake, it just has a human in the circuit.
    - larrys 12y ago
      Not to mention that obviously Johnson was aware of how the knob worked. And I find that it's funny that people think that a Vice President can't get temperature adjusted to his liking and should or would play games with him. "Oh there he goes again" type of thing. I don't think you get to be in a position of being able to fly a President or Vice President of any country by having an attitude and not being fully respectful of those in power.

ph0rque 12y ago

This is something I admit to doing while driving with my kids at times, when they ask to e.g. turn the volume of music up/down and I think it's just fine the way it is. I'll turn it down a few clicks, then turn it up to what it was before.

balabaster 12y ago
Works for dinner too... tell them you're having something they detest for dinner and then gradually dial it back to things that are less detestable and then cook what you were originally going to cook and they'll accept it without complaint :P

modfodder 12y ago

a film editor instructor liked to rag on director's wanting a frame clipped here or lengthened there, arguing they couldn't possibly know when something was a single frame too long or too short. He would solve this by hitting a few keys on the keyboard that effectively did nothing, then show the director the same cut. Inevitably they would always remark how much better it felt, not realizing no change was made.

anigbrowl 12y ago

I forget the name of it, but a pro audio company used to sell a very impressive-looking piece of rack equipment with several imposingly-titled buttons and sliders but which had nothing inside, whose sole function was to serve as a placebo for unwelcome meddlers.