Here. “There is a common belief among programmers–particularly those disinclined to believe the truth of anything coming out of Redmond–that Windows is full of ‘secret functions.’ These functions, so the story goes, are used by Microsoft to prevent independent reimplementation of its operating system and to give its own applications programmers an extra advantage. With the August 2002 release of its Platform SDK, Microsoft is complying with the terms of the consent decree it signed with the Department of Justice in November 2001. … If you are one of the people who harbor suspicions against Microsoft, then you’re not likely to be convinced that the recent release has changed anything. For a lot of the rest of us, including shell integration programmers, cryptographers and the terminally curious, the new information is fascinating and potentially useful, although not always as complete as we’d like.”
