[tlug] Doesn't the Ampersand make commands run in the background?

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

TLUG,

I dutifully looked up the answer to my question before posting here, but 
what I read doesn't seem to be the case.

A web site said:
"The shell has the capacity to run multiple commands at one time, and 
can run commands in the background using the ampersand (&) after the 
command."

But on my system, when I try adding an ampersand after a command, I 
don't get the command prompt back. I have to either wait for wait for 
the command to finish it's task, or press [ctrl]+C.

Did I miss something? This seems very straight forward, so it's hard to 
guess at what could be wrong.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

ï--
Dave M G
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
Kernel 2.6.17.7
Pentium D Dual Core Processor
PHP 5, MySQL 5, Apache 2