Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Restriction
Re*stric"tion\, n. [F. restriction, L. restrictio.]1. The act of restricting, or state of being restricted; confinement within limits or bounds. This is to have the same restriction with all other recreations,that it be made a divertisement. --Giv. of Tonque. 2. That which restricts; limitation; restraint; as, restrictions on trade.Cite This Source
restriction
n. 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 (esp. 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 107 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.
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restriction
Manager: "I'm sorry, Mr. Marx, but we can't let you use the pool; this country club is restricted."Restrictive is attested from c.1400.
Groucho: "Well, my daughter's only half-Jewish; could she go in up to her knees?"
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Main Entry: re·stric·tion
Function: noun
1 : something that restricts: as a : a regulation that restricts or restrains b : a limitation on the use or enjoyment of property or a facility
2 a : an act of restricting b : the state of being restricted
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Main Entry: re·stric·tion
Pronunciation: ri-'strik-sh&n
Function: noun
often attributive : the breaking of double-stranded DNA intofragments by restriction enzymes <restriction sites>
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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.
[The Jargon File]
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