2K1

[Drew Danielson]

GSCole wrote:
>
> A search on http://www.topclick.com/ brings up a number of sites, most
> of which seem to involve a discussion of sports activity, as in NFL 2k1
> strategy.  Usually found in gaming discussion sites, not sure if it is a
> copyrighted phrase or not.

I think the 2K1 you were finding were discussions of Sega Dreamcast
pro-sports videogames - they have several titles for 2001 that are
called a "2K1" something.  It's probably only copyrighted as used in the
various titles.

I would guess there was discussion about this around this time last
year, but I don't much care for the use of 2K to mean 2000.  As a
number, K is most often used to signify quantities of bits or bytes.
Since these critters live in a binary universe, K is a rough decimal
translation: 2^10 = 1024, not 1000.  So, Y2K would be the year 2048.

The only other example that I can think of the number K being used with
an elliptic unit is in foot racing - 5K or 10K races, where K = 1000
(meters).

While both uses of K are current, the former is by far much more
common.  Since "Y2K" was most often used in reference to the potential
date-related computer problems, I feel this adds more weight to the
argument that in this case K should properly be used to refer to 1024,
not 1000 (and that Y2K is a misapplication of the number K).

How about other words or letters that are used to mean 1000, like
"grand" or "G" or "large" (e.g., Y2G)?  Unfortunately these 3 examples
represent both quantity and units (i.e., forty large = $40,000), so they
wouldn't work either.