prescription

adj : (of medicinal drugs) available only with a doctor's written

prescription; "a prescription drug" [syn: {prescription(a)}]

[ant: {nonprescription(a)}]

n 1: directions for achieving a therapeutic effect

2: a drug that is available only with a prescription from a

doctor or dentist [syn: {prescription drug}, {prescription

medicien}, {ethical drug}] [ant: {over-the-counter drug}]

3: written instructions for an optician on the lenses for a

given person

4: written instructions from a physician or dentist to a

druggist concerning the form and dosage of a drug to be

issued to a given patient

restriction

A {bug} or design error that limits a program's capabilities,

and which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can quite work

up enough nerve to describe it as a {feature}. Often used

(especially by {marketroid} types) to make it sound as though

some crippling bogosity had been intended by the designers all

along, or was forced upon them by arcane technical constraints

of a nature no mere user could possibly comprehend (these

claims are almost invariably false).

Old-time hacker Joseph M. Newcomer advises that whenever

choosing a quantifiable but arbitrary restriction, you should

make it either a power of 2 or a power of 2 minus 1. If you

impose a limit of 17 items in a list, everyone will know it is

a random number - on the other hand, a limit of 15 or 16

suggests some deep reason (involving 0- or 1-based indexing in

binary) and you will get less {flamage} for it. Limits which

are round numbers in base 10 are always especially suspect.

[{Jargon File}]