Y2K

n. year 2000; (nickname for) malfunctions and problems expected to occur on January 1 in the year 2000

Noun
1. the year 2000 in the Gregorian calendar
(hypernym) year, twelvemonth, yr

Year 2000

the term used to describe the problems associated with a computer bug which caused some computers and other systems to have problems on Januray 1, 2000. Some programs were written to only use the last two digits of the year, recognized the year 2000 as 1900.

As we approach the end of this millennium, many users of data analysis software have discovered that their programs do not support dates with a year designation that starts with any other digits but "19." Thus, effectively, that software is incompatible with the dates that will soon become a reality (and even now need to be used in modeling, forecasting, etc.). STATISTICA (see University site licenses) is one of very few programs that is not only "year-2000 compatible" but, also so-called, "year-2000-friendly" by offering flexible options to customize the operation of the program (e.g., the interpretation of ambiguous date designations, such as 1/1/20, where 20 could mean 1920 or 2020), to meet different specific needs of the data analysts.