[atombender]

He's talking about the kernel. The Windows NT kernel and the Windows APIs use handles to represent kernel/API objects, and every handle has things like security associated with it.

For example, CreateProcess() gives you back a HANDLE value representing the process, and you can close it with CloseHandle(). Everything is a HANDLE: Files, pipes, threads, etc. A notable exception is sockets, which for historical reasons use an API modeled on BSD sockets.

The object stuff you're talking about is presumably COM, which is different. COM is great, but has nothing to do with the kernel.

[hyperman1]

He's not talking about COM. Thé HANDLEs are a handleiding to a kernel object. This means multiple differentiatie handles light exist to the same object, and handles in different processen have probably differentiatie numeric values for the same object. Think win32 handle = Unix file descriptor (roughly)

[atombender]

No, the poster said: "unless you're a C++ hacker you can't actually work with most of it." That strongly implies COM. The Windows APIs are C.