This could go really badly with microsoft. In my area, almost everyone uses pirated software, not because it is freely available but buying the original and seeing the system crash while your neighbours pirated system runs smoothly, tells you you wasted money (a lot here)(and I am talking about the so called third world country).
In other words, if Microsoft were very serious about piracy here, no one here would use their products here. The fact that most people here think that without Windows the computer would be useless would change when people would have good hardware and no Windows. They would look for alternatives (read linux), damn to Micro$oft.
The 13 day system calender could solve many problems and could be strictly a business calender. Some people are talking of the religious implications of this. In a country like India, for instance, there are at least 8 religions hindu, muslim, christian, sikh, zoroastrian, buddhism, jainism, judiasm etc each following their own date system. Only christians follow the generally accepted Gregorian system which is used for business purposes. Fairly the christians also should follow a religious system and make way for a system used for business. The year should start on 21st March of each year (summer solstice) not Jan 1. The reasons are
firstly the start of the year should not be in the middle of winter,
also most religions have their new years around this time (Christians 'think different' and call others April Fools)
also Most importantly the financial year begins near here.
Note that if the months are named starting from 1 to 13 then the seventh month (sapta in sanskrit, septa in Latin) and so on (ashta or octo (8), navam or novem (9), and dasham or decem (10) would coincide nearly with september, october, november and december respectively would be easy to relate in any indo-european language (hence the sanskrit numbers along with Latin). If the new year (and leap) are in a month of their own, they should be in the zeroeth month.
A year with 13 months could be unlucky, some would say. Imagine if Sunday was the first day of the 28 day month, There would be a friday 13th every month.
(If a leap year day were added like the new year day, some one would find use of it (like the olympics))
On an off topic note. What has Linux done that windows hasn't? So far the desktops are somewhat differnet looking, but neither has done anything that is noticably better than Windows. Sure some may say it is more stable, but then so are Solaris and the BSD's. They are almost equal on the game playing field. They are near equal in the application field (although some may argue one way or another that one is better). But what has Linux or UNIX in general done lately that Windows hasn't. (And don't give me that lame security argument as you can secure a windows box [put it behing a UNIX firewall]).
--
I write as a newbie to linux. Though I have used linux since RH5.0, I got a net connection just a few months ago. I depend entirely on the local computer magazine CD for the linux goodies. I had a project to write, a sort of book, and I felt miserable trying it with MSWord. I tried StarOffice on linux and it was worse. Trying wordperfect 8.0 trial on linux was another miserable failure. The last time I downloaded KDE2 pre (Korner) took me a whole night and a fat telephone bill (it was not free), and Kword was better but unstable. Then I tried Lyx. Lyx (+LaTeX) in concept was way different. It does not have an interface to boast about, but I easily managed to get a 63 pg report ready in a few hours, complete with TOC and index. Now this is a killer app I could never dream of on Windows. (I know windows ports do exist, but they either require an X server or Cygwin)
I am waiting for the KDE2 version of Lyx (Klyx) though. If Klyx integrates with Koffice so that , for example, I can embed a Kspread part in my document, edit the object using Kspread part in klyx, then in final output translate the spreadsheet into a Lyx (or Tex) table and get a printout, in less than half the time it would take in a conventional Wordprocessor; this could be something unique to linux/Unix, and KDE, which Windows does not have.
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This could go really badly with microsoft. In my area, almost everyone uses pirated software, not because it is freely available but buying the original and seeing the system crash while your neighbours pirated system runs smoothly, tells you you wasted money (a lot here)(and I am talking about the so called third world country).
In other words, if Microsoft were very serious about piracy here, no one here would use their products here. The fact that most people here think that without Windows the computer would be useless would change when people would have good hardware and no Windows. They would look for alternatives (read linux), damn to Micro$oft.
The 13 day system calender could solve many problems and could be strictly a business calender. Some people are talking of the religious implications of this. In a country like India, for instance, there are at least 8 religions hindu, muslim, christian, sikh, zoroastrian, buddhism, jainism, judiasm etc each following their own date system. Only christians follow the generally accepted Gregorian system which is used for business purposes. Fairly the christians also should follow a religious system and make way for a system used for business. The year should start on 21st March of each year (summer solstice) not Jan 1. The reasons are
Note that if the months are named starting from 1 to 13 then the seventh month (sapta in sanskrit, septa in Latin) and so on (ashta or octo (8), navam or novem (9), and dasham or decem (10) would coincide nearly with september, october, november and december respectively would be easy to relate in any indo-european language (hence the sanskrit numbers along with Latin). If the new year (and leap) are in a month of their own, they should be in the zeroeth month.
A year with 13 months could be unlucky, some would say. Imagine if Sunday was the first day of the 28 day month, There would be a friday 13th every month.
(If a leap year day were added like the new year day, some one would find use of it (like the olympics))
On an off topic note. What has Linux done that windows hasn't? So far the desktops are somewhat differnet looking, but neither has done anything that is noticably better than Windows. Sure some may say it is more stable, but then so are Solaris and the BSD's. They are almost equal on the game playing field. They are near equal in the application field (although some may argue one way or another that one is better). But what has Linux or UNIX in general done lately that Windows hasn't. (And don't give me that lame security argument as you can secure a windows box [put it behing a UNIX firewall]).
--I write as a newbie to linux. Though I have used linux since RH5.0, I got a net connection just a few months ago. I depend entirely on the local computer magazine CD for the linux goodies. I had a project to write, a sort of book, and I felt miserable trying it with MSWord. I tried StarOffice on linux and it was worse. Trying wordperfect 8.0 trial on linux was another miserable failure. The last time I downloaded KDE2 pre (Korner) took me a whole night and a fat telephone bill (it was not free), and Kword was better but unstable. Then I tried Lyx. Lyx (+LaTeX) in concept was way different. It does not have an interface to boast about, but I easily managed to get a 63 pg report ready in a few hours, complete with TOC and index. Now this is a killer app I could never dream of on Windows. (I know windows ports do exist, but they either require an X server or Cygwin)
I am waiting for the KDE2 version of Lyx (Klyx) though. If Klyx integrates with Koffice so that , for example, I can embed a Kspread part in my document, edit the object using Kspread part in klyx, then in final output translate the spreadsheet into a Lyx (or Tex) table and get a printout, in less than half the time it would take in a conventional Wordprocessor; this could be something unique to linux/Unix, and KDE, which Windows does not have.