Re: Preferential Access to OS code

["Norm" <normanmo@clark.net>]

  On Tue, 18 Nov 1997 14:12:10 -0500 (EST), James Love wrote:
  
  >
  >Anyway, I've been looking at how IE4 claims to fit into Windows 95 and
  >NT.... 
  >
  >One of the means by which they have been able to combine the file system
  >and the network is by a thing they call "Shell Namespaces". 
  >Essentially, when the file system viewer encounters a read-only
  >directory containing a file named "desktop.ini", the viewer, rather than
  >displaying the files, launches a program referenced by a field whithin
  >the "desktop.ini" file. 
  >
  >This mechanism was not released until the IE4 software came out.  I'm
  >not sure when the API documentation was released, but it reasonably new.
  >And the documentation is not complete -- Microsoft is clearly and
  >demonstrably using undocumented extensions. 
  
  
       This certainly isn't new to IE4, they've been doing this for
  years...why do you think the various windoze APIs have been such moving
  targets??  And if this isn't bad enough they've also included code for
  the sole purpose of breaking a competitor's application.  It brings to
  mind something a M$ employee told me years ago.  He told me about a
  'mantra' the M$ Word team use to have "Word's not done until Lotus
  won't run".
  
   ...Cheers,
  
   ...Norm
  
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