What does Y2K stand for?

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What exactly does Y2K stand for. I have heard a variety of answers from people and I am still not sure.

-- Kimberley Weiler (flirty_91@hotmail.com), November 21, 1999

Answers

For you Kimberly, it stands for DUH!

-- Jack (mercer@usa.net), November 21, 1999.

MMMmmmmm......

Y= Year

2K = 2000

C

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), November 21, 1999.


Your'e 2 Kute.

-- Bill (y2khippo@yahoo.com), November 21, 1999.

Why it means
"Yes 2 Kimberly!!" of course.


-- Uncle Fester (unclefester@adams.com), November 21, 1999.

Year Two Thousand. (Y2K). K stands for thousands, like in the help wanted ads the salary is listed as 30k or 15k a year. This is the explaination I know, there might be more.

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), November 21, 1999.


Y (year) 2 (two) K (thousand)

Shorthand for "year 2000" easier to write than spelling it out. I understand it originated with IT geeks in the mid-nineties who were using the term a lot and switched to the short-hand phrase to save key-strokes.

Am I the only one to see the irony here? It seems to me that this is the kind of mindset that got us into this mess in the first place.

-- rob minor (rbminor@hotmail.com), November 21, 1999.


short sightedness

-- tree (thetrees@bigfoot.com), November 21, 1999.

Be nice, folks.

Kimberly, you have had some good answers. Ignore the sarcasm, please. Not all of our children play well together.

Please, stay here for up to the minute news and prep help at the prep forum.

-- mushroom (mushroom_bs_too_long@yahoo.com), November 21, 1999.


Kimberley: Do you like to mudwrestle?

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), November 21, 1999.

There ya go, King.

For a while there, I thought you had given up the sport. :-)

regards,

gene

-- gene (ekbaker@essex1.com), November 21, 1999.



Y2K has a lot of meanings Kimberley. To some it means nothing, it's just another year gone by and a new one beginning. To some, it means that computers may not function properly, embedded chips will malfunction, and as a result of these failures, there will be breakdowns in every sector of living. It's obvious that the disaster relief people (Red Cross and FEMA) are warning people to prepare themselves for no power and no food. The responsibility will be yours though to take care of yourself and family. Y2K means whatever you want it to mean for you.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), November 21, 1999.

Kimberley sorry some people can't take a serious question seriously, think the stress of the CDC is getting to them Sandy

-- sandy (rstyree@overland.net), November 21, 1999.

Carol, Mushroom ,Way to take care of people! K, I think stands for kilo. Metric for 1000. Year Two 1000. Don't leave Kimberly. I am A lurker here for 6 mos. There are VERY smart people here.

THERE ARE NO STUPID QUESTIONS!!

-- Hatti (klavine@tco.com), November 21, 1999.


Just to save you from having to post again, CDC that was referenced previously stands for Century Date Change. Yes we (some) know that this coming January is not the true century but some people including the Federal Reserve Chairman Allen GreenShades like to use CDC for Y2K same thing. Look into history and there are previous posts on abbreviations and meaning of names. Where is the link poobah when you need him.

-- squid (Itsdark@down.here), November 22, 1999.

Kimberley, to be asked by the King of Spain to mudwrestle is a great honor. The correct response is to blush and tell him you're honored.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), November 22, 1999.


Kimberly --

Y2K stands for the Year 2000 (as one of the posters above noted, K is stands for the metric 'kilo' or the prefix representing 1000.)

The term itself stands for the problem that some computers have with recognition of the new century, due to a very old shorthand method of representing dates. This practice, which uses only two digits to represent a year, rather than adding the century designation, is a hangover from the early (50's, 60's and 70's) mainframe computers where data was input on a 'punch card' using 'hollerith code'. These where only 80 columns long, so saving a digit here or a digit there could run into real money, just in the cost of the cards.

It was also true that at that time, memory in computers was a very expensive commodity. (I can remember working on one that had 4 banks of memory, each about 8 feet long, by 4 feet wide, by 6 feet high, which, together, represented the princely sum of 256 thousand words, {a 'word' on this machine was 36 bits), or *almost* as much as I have in my pager.) Therefore, saving two words of memory by utilizing only two digits to represent the year made the programs significantly more efficient. At that time. Of course, it presents a bit of a problem in 5 weeks or so. At which time, all of those computers will be seeing '00' instead of '99'. And the implied century should be '20' instead of '19'.

-- just another (another@engineer.com), November 22, 1999.


HEY ALL --

Lets keep it clean folks! The *ONLY* stupid question is *THE ONE YOU DON'T ASK!*

Lets not scare off any newbies who are just now coming to awareness of this issue. That is, after all, one of the purposes of this forum, is it not?

-- just another (another@engineer.com), November 22, 1999.


HECK. newbie!! Kimberly is none other than our good friend Kosky in drag.

-- tt (cuddluppy@nowhere.com), November 22, 1999.

David Eddy

-- Lane Core Jr. (elcore@sgi.net), November 22, 1999.

Look down at your zipper: YKK.

Everyone has one!

-- zip (zip@it.up), November 22, 1999.


Greed, laziness, ineptitude, short-sightedness, spin, smirks, selfishness, trolls, scoffs, lies, opportunistic mayhem, cascading global systemic interconnected failures, terrorists, catastrophe.

-- In A Nutshell (allaha@earthlink.net), November 22, 1999.

tt,

The King vs The Kosky in the mudpit. I hope One of the Majesties will employ the costume designer for boxer Macho Cammacho {sp?}, and the other borrows a little something from Kaddafi's closet.

Got Pagentry?

-- flora (***@__._), November 22, 1999.


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