A book that's popular enough to be made into a movie and a good read. The Rainmaker is one John Grisham's legal thrillers. Written in 1995, the book revolves around the life of a newly qualified lawyer and his fight with a big insurance company.
With its various sub-plots involving everything from underworld runaways to will changing grannies it has the reader turning pages.The best part is the anticipation of big money squezed out of a big bad insurance company.
It has very good ending, which lets the reader wanting for more.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Cascading error loss in Software
Cascading error is a phenomenon where one error condition leads to another error. This is more common than expected. Generally an error which is not expected to occur will lead to the error getting cascaded into another error. Since, the first error itself was not expected the error generated as a result of the first error will also be unexpected. Thus a cascade of errors continues.
Consider the example of a special character in the input a program. The special character will miss all the given conditions and will go to a error handling mechanism. The error handling mechanism may again fail due to the special character. This leads to a cascading error condition.
Now coming to the serious problem of error loss. A very serious error may get lost in the cascading error due to reduction in error severity. The severity of the error may get reduced in each step of the cascade and finally end up as a info alert. Although programming languages like Java have dedicated error handling mechanisms, the very nature of cascading errors makes it difficult to catch them. Thus, its better to have a catch all exceptions condition that reports the error that has been caught as the highest possible error severity, as the severity might have got reduced during the cascade.
Let me tell you a story to explain how cascading error loss occurs. A shop catches fire at night and starts burning. The onlookers see the burning shop and the news about the fire starts to spread. By the time the news reaches the owner of the shop, the location of the shop is not very clear. The shop owner comes to know about a shop on fire but does not realise that its his own shop. Similarly a very serious error can be overlooked due to cascading errors.
Consider the example of a special character in the input a program. The special character will miss all the given conditions and will go to a error handling mechanism. The error handling mechanism may again fail due to the special character. This leads to a cascading error condition.
Now coming to the serious problem of error loss. A very serious error may get lost in the cascading error due to reduction in error severity. The severity of the error may get reduced in each step of the cascade and finally end up as a info alert. Although programming languages like Java have dedicated error handling mechanisms, the very nature of cascading errors makes it difficult to catch them. Thus, its better to have a catch all exceptions condition that reports the error that has been caught as the highest possible error severity, as the severity might have got reduced during the cascade.
Let me tell you a story to explain how cascading error loss occurs. A shop catches fire at night and starts burning. The onlookers see the burning shop and the news about the fire starts to spread. By the time the news reaches the owner of the shop, the location of the shop is not very clear. The shop owner comes to know about a shop on fire but does not realise that its his own shop. Similarly a very serious error can be overlooked due to cascading errors.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Sanjivini Park or Happy man park
Happy Man
DucksA very unique park set in the heart of mysore, is sanjivini park, popularly known as the "Happy Man Park". With various ducks and other land based birds let out in the open make the park distinct.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
3 mistakes of my life by Chetan Bhagat
The third book by Chetan Bhagat seems to be better than the past two. You can catch a free excerpt at his site. The book is based along the lines of his first book "five point someone" in that it revolves around the lives of 3 friends. Each one has a dream, to make it to the national cricket team, to be a businessman and not to end being a priest(being a priest is not that bad---is Chetan against religion--may be not--but he sure seems agnostic).
The book follows the lives of these 3 Gujarati's through the earthquake, through the Godhra Carnage and into the present(2005 AD). With an unusually dark beginning just like 5 point someone, the book begins with a suicide!!. The book appeals to the masses :) as the 3 friends could be anybody, not just IIT'ians.
The story is continous except for the wonderfully bizzare beginning. We dont get the idea that Govind Patel is a big fan of Chetan. So its kind of surprising that he sends the letter to Chetan in the first place. Apart from such to good to be true situations... the book is a good read.
The book follows the lives of these 3 Gujarati's through the earthquake, through the Godhra Carnage and into the present(2005 AD). With an unusually dark beginning just like 5 point someone, the book begins with a suicide!!. The book appeals to the masses :) as the 3 friends could be anybody, not just IIT'ians.
The story is continous except for the wonderfully bizzare beginning. We dont get the idea that Govind Patel is a big fan of Chetan. So its kind of surprising that he sends the letter to Chetan in the first place. Apart from such to good to be true situations... the book is a good read.
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