dereferencing null

[Sandeep Datta]

> If you're dealing with plugins from an unknown source, it's a 
> good design to separate plugins and such as entirely separate 
> processes. Then, when one goes down, it cannot bring down 
> anyone else, since there is no shared address space.
>
> They can communicate with the OS-supplied interprocess 
> communications API.

Yes I think this is a good idea in general but the process/IPC 
overhead can be substantial if you have a lot of (small) plugins. 
I think Google chrome uses this trick (among others) to good 
effect in providing fault tolerance ( 
http://www.geekosystem.com/google-chrome-hacking-prize/ ).