Dear iPhone Review Team

To Whom it May Concern,

You claim to the FCC (to your customers too) that Google Voice has not been rejected, but is still "Under Review". Fine, then please tell us:

Who is reviewing it?

What aspects need more time to review?

When will the review be complete?

Where is the review being done?

Why is it taking so long?

If all of what you say is true, these answers should be really easy to come up with. However, I suspect either it is not under review, or that the reasons it is under review is not what you claim.

Love

The Schmitzer

Dear AT&T

To Whom It May (not) Concern:

My Internet is working again, no thanks to you.

No, I don't need to buy a new DSL modem from you as you suggested, like you did the last time I had a problem. I guess this is your default tech support answer now, like rebooting Windows is for desktop support.

If I wanted I-don't-care service, wouldn't you think I'd switch to Charter?

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Regulators

Please free MySQL from the evil clutches of Oracle.

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Bill Gates

Dear Mr. Gates,

We have to deal with bugs because of you every day. Your stunt at TED was nothing new. Better quality products, now that would be news.

Love

The Schmitzer

Dear Ray

Mr Ozzie,

I read in a recent Wired article:

According to Microsoft, one example of a successful service is Windows Update, which automatically installs patches and bug fixes on users' operating systems

How do you define successful? Is it that

• the patches successfully get downloaded to my machine?
• the little shield icon in the tray tells me there are updates to install?
• or the cute bubble telling me there are new updates to install?
  

Here are the ways in which Windows Update is unsuccessful

• Features in remote desktop sessions stop working
• Attempts to install updates hang the machine (Windows is installing new updates...)
  
• Third party vendors can't (or don't) use windows update to update their software (how many of your processes are update daemons?)
  
• The machine shuts down without warning (telling you afterward doesn't count)

In short, the easy part, which any company could do, and saves us a single click on a web site, works really well. The hard part, which is critical to our every day experience as desktop users, has major problems. Have you googled "windows update problems"?

This is a head-in-the-sand success. Keep it up, and we'll all be on Macs.

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Nick Jr

To Whom It May Concern,

I first heard in the Cabbage Patch, that you block the word Christmas in your free draw program, in the same way you filter explicit words.

Please note Christmas is not a dirty word. Neither is Jesus (blocked), Mass (blocked) or God (blocked).

In my drawing below, I would have loved to put the word Christmas in there:


Looks like your filter has a hole in it. Maybe your developers should be reading The Schmitzer's Comment.

Merry Christmas to all the lovely folks at Nick Jr.

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Linus

Mr. Torvalds,

Thanks for writing the Git source control system. One problem however, it is not yet supported on Windows from what I see. Just on a Mac and Linux. Not even Cygwin.

Don't git me wrong, I love subversion, but why Linux over Windows :) We want to play too.

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear XP Service Pack 3 Packager

To Whom It May Concern,

Just curious, why did you think that by installing XP SP3, I no longer wanted to use iTunes to play MP3 files? There was no checkbox for me to uncheck, no questions asked, no wizard to guide me.

While we all know that Windows Media Player is clearly the better application of the two at drawing funny lines on the screen, I think I'll stick with the one that the rest of the world uses.

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Visual Studio 2008 File Save As Implementor

Did you question the requester when the aforementioned told you that Save As should remove a file from an old project? Making a copy of a file being the same as moving a file?

If it never dawned on you that this was a bad way to implement this feature, perhaps you could move to another project where usability is not such a concern.

Perhaps Windows Vista is calling you?

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Windows Update Team

To Whom It May Concern:

VPN cannot connect...Administrator privileges lost...Network connection status incorrect...Explorer slowed down to a halt...Sharing and Security missing from context menu...Visual Studio *thinks* it is running for the first time...Windows Explorer crashing...Lost write permissions to my directory...

What do all these lovely symptoms have in common? They all happen when Windows update pulss down some fixes and New updates are ready to install.

Here's an idea: The next time you push some fixes down to my machine...FIX WINDOWS UPDATE!

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear COM Documentation Team

To Whom It May Concern:

I've always said COM documentation stunk. Now I know its true.

I followed your MSDN link to Creating .NET components that use enterprise services.

Which is, of course, in Japanese! So I modified the url to get the English version.

Thanks for nothing.

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Visual Studio Search Team

To Whom it May Concern:

I type my search term in the search bar...

I click on the "find in files" icon...

You replace my search term with whatever the cursor happened to be pointing to...

I then search for what you want, not what I want. Don't you get it?

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Windows Search Team

To Whom It May Concern:

"Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you." says the Bible.

I seek, but it doesn't find. I know the files are there, I can see them. But search doesn't find them. So I ask you, "What is this useful for?" Knock, knock, knock, "Anybody home?"

Love,

The Schmitzer

Dear Font Designers

To Whom It May Concern:

Some time ago, you used to distinguish between a capital letter o and a zero by putting a slash through the zero.

You no longer do that.

Please do so again.

Love,

The Schmitzer