Statistics argue otherwise. More than 78% of desktops are running Windows. Even accounting for the fact that a lot of /. folks are huge nerds and eat, sleep, and breath linux, there's still a better than 50% chance that something running an x86 chip, posting here, is running Windows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

The decreasing order of units is exactly why we say it the way we do. You start with the larger unit - the month - and then go to the smaller unit - the day. Big picture, then specificity. Since we use it in everyday speech, and year isn't usually required for context, we become accustomed to expressing dates as September 11th. November 5th. 5th of November. 11th of September. The idea is that the larger unit frames the smaller in order to express your information concisely. Because we're in the habit of just using the month and day without the year, the year sounds awkward because it's not a part of the usual phrase. So 2001 September 11th wouldn't be used. 2001 would get its own phrase, so it'd be expressed as "September 11th, 2001." There aren't any hard and fast rules. People who bash other cultures because of grammatical quirks need to get a grip.