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Y

Y2K n. See Year 2000 problem.

Y2K BIOS patch card n. An ISA board that ensures that system calls to the BIOS return the correct year. The BIOS patch card checks the date the BIOS gets from the real-time clock and sends the correct date to whichever application or process requested it. While a BIOS patch card proved effective for most situations once the year 2000 was reached, some applications and processes that work directly with the real-time clock (not an advisable practice) actually received the wrong date on non-Year-2000-compliant PCs.

Y2K BIOS test n. See BIOS test.

Y2K bug n. See Year 2000 problem.

Y2K-compliant adj. See Year 2000 compliant.

Y2K computer bug n. See Year 2000 problem.

Y2K ready adj. See Year 2000 compliant.

Yahoo! n. The first major online Web-based directory and search engine for Internet resources, which can be found at http://www.yahoo.com. See also search engine (definition 2).

Yahoo! Mail n. A popular Web-based e-mail service provided for free by Yahoo! Inc. Compare Hotmail.

Yahoo! Messenger n. A popular instant-messaging application provided for free by Yahoo! Inc. on a variety of operating systems. See also instant messaging. Compare AIM, ICQ, .NET Messenger Service.

Yanoff list n. The informal name of the Internet services list created and maintained by Scott Yanoff. The Yanoff list was one of the earliest directories of Internet services and resources. It is located at http://www.spectracom.com/islist/.

y-axis n. The vertical reference line on a grid, chart, or graph that has horizontal and vertical dimensions. See also Cartesian coordinates.

YB n. See yottabyte.

Year 2000 compliant adj. The criteria for this varied among companies and organizations; however, a general theme was that software or hardware would make the transition from 1999 to 2000 without producing errors. For a PC, the general thinking was that if the real-time clock passed a Year 2000 BIOS test, it was Year 2000 compliant. However, testing the computing environment from end to end, considering the readiness of the operating systems, applications, custom code, data, and system interfaces, was also strongly recommended.

Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act n. A U.S. statute enacted in October 1998 that required U.S. companies to publicly disclose how they were attempting to make their systems or products ready for the year 2000. Many companies made this information available on the World Wide Web.

Year 2000 problem n. Prior to January 1, 2000, a potential software problem stemming from the use of two digits (99) rather than four (1999) as year indicators in computer programs. Such programs assumed that 19 preceded every year value, and so could potentially fail or produce incorrect calculations by interpreting the year 2000 (00) as an earlier date than 19xx when the year rolled over into a new century. The use of two-digit year indicators was prevalent in, though not limited to, older programs that had been written when a saving of two bytes (digits) per year value was significant in terms of computer memory. Because the use of two-digit year indicators was widespread, companies, governments, and other organizations took measures on a large scale to prevent the Year 2000 problem from affecting their computing systems. In the end, however, the problem luckily proved largely uneventful.

Year 2000 ready adj. See Year 2000 compliant.

Year 2000 rollover n. The moment when the year in a computer system changed from 1999 to 2000. Also called: date rollover, millennium transition, rollover, Year 2000 transition.

Year 2000 time problem n. See Year 2000 problem.

Year 2000 transition n. See Year 2000 rollover.

Yellow Pages n. 1. The former name of a UNIX utility, provided by SunSoft (Sun Microsystems system software), that maintains a central database of names and locations of the resources on a network. The Yellow Pages enables processes on any node to locate resources by name. This utility is now known formally as NIS (Network Information Service). 2. InterNIC Registration Services database of domain names and their IP addresses. See also domain name, IP address. 3. Any of several Internet business directory services. Some are print publications, some are strictly electronic, and some are both.

Yes/No data type n. A data type used to define database fields that will contain only one of two values, such as Yes or No and True or False. Null values are not allowed. See also boolean.

Yettie n. Short for Young, Entrepreneurial Tech-based Twenty-something or Young, Entrepreneurial Technocrat. A person who works in a technology or Internet-related field and who embraces technological change and opportunity. Yettie is intended to be a successor to the older term yuppie.

YHBT n. Acronym for you have been trolled. An expression used in e-mail and newsgroups to indicate that the receiver has taken a deliberately set bait. See also troll.

YHL n. Acronym for you have lost. An expression used in e-mail and newsgroups, often following YHBT. See also YHBT.

Ymodem n. A variation of the Xmodem file transfer protocol that includes the following enhancements: the ability to transfer information in 1-kilobyte (1024-byte) blocks, the ability to send multiple files (batch file transmission), cyclical redundancy checking (CRC), and the ability to abort transfer by transmitting two CAN (cancel) characters in a row. See also CRC, Xmodem.

yocto- prefix A metric prefix meaning 10 ²⁴ (one septillionth in the U.S. system).

yoke n. The part of a CRT (cathode-ray tube) that deflects the electron beam, causing it to strike a specific area on the screen. Also called: deflection coils. See also CRT.

yotta- prefix A metric prefix meaning 10²⁴ (one septillion in the U.S. system).

yottabyte n. A unit of measure equal to 2⁸⁰ bytes, or approximately 1 septillion (10²⁴) bytes. When calculated as a multiple of 1000 zettabytes (the next highest unit of measure), a yottabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes; when calculated as 1024 zettabytes, a yottabyte is 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes. The prefix yotta- is meant to sound like the Greek letter iota. Abbreviation: YB.

YY n. The form in which the year part of a date is stored in some, mostly older, computer systems. Before 2000, the possibility existed that computers that used a 2-digit date would incorrectly interpret the year 2000 (year 00) as the year 1900 and disrupt the computer s operation.

YYYY n. Symbolic of providing fully distinguished dates, including 4-digit years. Using 4-digit years was an important step in many Year 2000 remediation programs especially those focused on data.