The market in question is a fairly small one, and the existence of the monopoly is the fault of the Swiss government rather than of Microsoft, but it appears to exist nonetheless.
If Switzerland is anything like the US, I'd wager the market you're referring to (federal, state and local contracts) is a lot larger than you think. Maybe someone can cite some real numbers, but I'd guess it outstrips anything in the private sector.
...to add to their massive data mining efforts. I can't even imagine the possibilities.
If they do, I hope for our sake it turns out better than their translations.
the competent authorities will be transferred to safety in the system
Somebody set us up the bomb.
the street that 15 thousand people in the face of a second degree in the search by scanning the person is detected and the system of the images with image is brought to the screen.
Main screen turn on.
That the people at the top to lock the camera by a third during the 300 meters, is to follow.
"There's no such thing as soy milk. It's soy juice. But they couldn't sell soy juice, so they called it soy milk. Because anytime you say soy juice, you actually...start to gag. Know how come I know there's no such thing as soy milk? Because there's no soy titty, is there?"
The year is 2009 and we have fat pipes, so you have little excuse for sticking to 1980s style text conversations.
You're suggesting, perhaps, that Slashdot offer the following options:
Plain Old Text
HTML Formatted
Extrans (html tags to text)
Code
Webcam
I'd think that would be impractical for a numer of reasons, not the least of which is that the moderation system would have to be changed to account for things like no underwear and manboobs.
As for the 1980's characterisation, I'll point out we've been using text for at last a few thousand years.
Any time something like this happens everyone from the first manager with the authority to do something that refuses all the way up the chain gets held responsible for whatever happens as a result of their refusal to act.
Then again, it's quite likely that the Sheriff Dale Williams will give both "Bob" from Customer Service in Bangalore, and his supervisor "Mr. Jones", an Unsatisfactory grade when completing the online Verizon Internet and Telephony Services Help Desk Experience questionnaire.
And the primary question is: is the problem a problem with the moral health of people, or is the problem a problem with the entertainment industry's business model?
You could probably argue the former, but like most things that take on a new and typically abstract form, there's too much pychological distance for morality to play a significant role. Financial crimes, for example, typically cause more real loss or damage to people's lives than a bank robbery, but are rarely considered as serious. That's why stealing a physical CD from a retail store can be considered taboo, but downloading digital files from the intarwebs will be viewed as something that's ordinary if not acceptable.
Then, of course, there's the issue of what a downloaded file is really worth. There's eleventy million mp3 files out there on the intarwebs, so individually, they can't possibly be worth very much, right? From the point of view of the casual downloader, the only monetary value associated with a few minutes of network activity is the electricity used to power the blinky lights. If downloading files is a crime, then its moral equivalency is telling your girlfriend that no, those jeans don't make her look fat.
Yesterday I found this [terminally...herent.com] wonderful gem of a blog post, which told me about a lot of applications which I can use from the CLI, as well as a series of blog posts from this [wordpress.com] guy, which give you a lot more ideas [wordpress.com] in terms of applications and how to set them up.
I've always wondered why such apps aren't more popular than they are. When used (albeit as a mockup) in a movie or on television, the audience goes "Wow!". That same audience goes home and says "No way!".
The argument, of course, is that it requires advanced knowledge, or that it's simply too hard. No matter that middle-aged secretaries had little trouble using or master disk formatting, file management or WordPerfect in the DOS days, or that the employees at the DMV or at Fry's counter are hardly compsci graduates.
Congrats on your discoveries. Be sure to checkout Soekris boards for more fun.
Well, it's less broken if you consider that in major metropolitan areas, cars do spend much of their time idling at traffic lights (typically with air conditioning running), as well as on congested city streets and freeways. Then, of course, there's the drive-thrus for those too fat to get out of their cars.;-)
As for car analogies generally being stupid, yeah, you're right. But so are most of the alternatives. The reason why "sound bites", for example, are preferrable to hour-long analyses or 5,000 word flabby blog posts isn't that people don't want a full understanding, it's just that doing so is too much work. It's like having to evaluate a car purchase based on specifications instead of... oh, wait.
The current estimates range between half a million and four million women being held this way. I have no idea how accurate that is, but as such, I don't think it's anything like a gross exaggeration to make the claim that involuntary prostitution is real.
That "involuntary" prostitution is real no one is going to argue with. However, that's not to say the wild-assed estimates for "involuntary" prostitution are significant when compared to wild-assed estimates for for "voluntary" prostitution.
Again, you're tone is indistinguishable from what passes for journalism on those pseudo documentaries that litter the cable channels.
1. Cite wild-assed statistics for prostitution across the world. 2. Show video dramatic footage of widespread street-corner prostitution in various localities. 3. Get someone in authority to say that organised crime is involved in illegal immigration and immigrant smuggling, but leave the viewer with impression that prostitution is at the core. 5. Cite a few known cases of violent crime, child abuse, child prostitution, and then conflate those one-off cases with prostitution in general. 6. Make the assertion that prostitution includes all the above.
Works on the emotional level, but when you have a closer look, you see something else. Which is mostly women in poverty making shitty choices. The rest is tangential.
Some prostitutes are not willing prostitutes -- they've been forced into it.
If you believe in free will and choice, then you can't make that claim except in the rarest of circumstances (organised crime, one-off cases of kidnapping, etc.). The perception that any significant portion of prostitutes are "poor and innocent women being forced in slavery" is a gross exaggeration that makes for great TV, but has no basis in reality.
What we're talking about here is the poor who are forced into something every day of their lives and the list of what that includes is a mile long. More accurately, the choices the poor have are often choices between The Bad, The Really Bad, and the Truly Fucked.
Sucks to be poor. Or weak. Or stupid. Let's not dramatise things like this is a Victorian era novel. I don't know whether the city you live has any local mobsters, but I'll guarantee it's got an endless supply of young women looking for easy money.
When people complain that "prostitution cheapens women", they are exactly correct. Prostitution lowers the asking price for sexual services, which means that its legalization will increase what your female partner will be willing to do with you in bed. (Just look at all the direct and indirect costs of sex right now: dates, courtship, relationship, etc. etc. etc.)
Wow. This is probably the most outrageous things I've ever read on Slashdot. That said, you're probably right, but if you want to evaluate things using free market principles, you'll have to address the issues of monopoly power (the wife) and imperfect information (promises from a mistress you haven't yet slept with), among others.
Try buying a cigarette that isn't loaded with additives that just make the damn things even less healthy. Your choices are American Spirits and... yeah, hope they have American Spirits at the convenience store.
I don't give much credence to the "loaded with additives" description given that setting fire to something invariably produces something other than fresh air and rainbows, but be aware all cigarettes sold in the US and the EU, for example, are required to be "fire safe"[1].
That means it's loaded with an additive.
------------ 1. Fire-safe is the government's oxymoronic term for a cigarette that doesn't burn well, requires repeated re-lighting, and taste like shit.
Unless the business world converts to a French way of living...
A premise for a good joke, no doubt, but I'm having trouble getting the one that was already made. It's sunny in Paris? The French wear expensive glasses? R&D can't be done without long lunches and a pack of Gaulloise? Resenting the English increases market share?
because one guy (Noah Webster) in the 1800s thought it would be a really great idea to dumb down the language a bit
The blame, however, isn't solely Webster's. Surnames were routinely dumbed down by a mostly uneducated or illiterate populace, and both the spellings and pronunciations evolved over time into something very different (laughably so if you recognise the orginal).
Americans take pride in such things, so I guess it's a waste of effort asking them to reconsider the "correctness" of their ways. When I lived in Chicago, telling a cabbie that you lived on "Guthie" was a lot easier than pointing to a street sign that read "Goethe" and then engaging in a discussion of German language, culture and philosophy.
Quite possibly a Windows PowerUser(TM) who discovered that Linux file systems don't require the daily defragmentation that Windows' NFTS does, and is now having trouble finding something to do.
Wow. Anyone able to use the words rhetoric, metonymy, synecdoche, and mete in the same post deserves the Slashdot Technical Achievement in a Non-Computing Category Award.
On the other hand, I wonder how many of those engaged in the study or writing of poetry didn't cringe at the "rhetorician" category.
...is that most of the "easy fruit" of reporting that basicly just being on site and report what's happening is easily done by regular people, there's always someone who likes to talk about it.
Time for another Slashdot Pop Quiz. Which of the following is most true?
a) Regular people are willing to regularly attend hearings on the local, state or federal level;
b) Regular people have a budget to attend and cover those hearings;
c) Regular people have an extensive network of contacts in local, state, or federal governments with whom they've developed relationships that facilitate ferreting out new stories, ongoing consent to both on and off-record quoting, and cross-checking facts; or
d) Regular people watch American Idol.
The answer is obviously (d). Now if you're feeling inspired, pick a topic. Doesn't have to be government. After you've spent a few weeks researching who the movers and shakers are, see if you can get your name and email address added to the list of folks who regularly receive information, say, something ordinary like press releases. Your odds are higher than trying to get someone important to actually take your calls, but those odds are probably still slim to none.
When you get round to discovering you've got nothing to contribute, you'll be ready to blog about it anyway along with countless others who are doing the same. Hopefully by then you've gained some respect for reporters, most of whom are employed by newspapers. If not, I guess we'll have to sit back and wait for that traffic accident, meteor landing in your backyard, or other one-off event to occur for you to play Regular Guy Reporter.
Perhaps as a Canadian I don't appreciate the finer points of the American political process, but I'm having trouble finding a meaningful relationship in this sequence of events:
1. Senate Hearing is scheduled.
2. Random Blog quotes unnamed "[s]enate sources" as saying "they were not aware of any debate surrounding his nomination."
3. Slashdot editors release a news story with a headline of "Senate Sources Say CTO Confirmation a Done Deal"
4. Thinly disguised editorial consisting mostly of anti-Microsoft remarks and an assertion that confirmation hearings are a sham process is submitted as a news story to Slashdot.
Sigh. I guess I'll have to reconsider Slashdot as primary source of news and go back to reading newspapers and watching C-SPAN.
Damn companies trying to trick me with that whole "making stuff I want to buy" scam.
LOL.
I'm not too fond of gadgets, but admittedly, that MIMO (or at least the functionality it provides) really caught my eye. I'd imagine something like it could one day be in everyone's living room.
Then again, most of the gadgets being sold today can be a real bitch for someone other than a Windows or Mac user. Even the simplest device, if advertised as standards compliant and requiring no special drivers, usually means "Might work in Linux, but probably won't for the BSDs". On that note, if anyone knows of a USB-serial adapter that works in FreeBSD, my notebook would love to hear from you.
"Dutch RIAA" doesn't mean they are affiliated with the (US) RIAA or that they have any relationship. All the phrase means is that they are the equivalent of the RIAA, in the Netherlands. In other words, that they have a similar purpose and so forth.
Sorry, but "Dutch RIAA" is ambiguous.
If the article submitter meant "the Dutch equivalent of the RIAA", he could have written words.
Words have meaning. Being too lazy to use them, or using them incorrectly narrows your audience to those who have trouble reading, lack critical thinking abilities, or otherwise make assumptions that just happen to coincide with yours. That, and an invitation for everyone to question whether you're a moron or simply illiterate who possibly has something to say.
Then again, if efforts to be meaningful and accurate (especially in a written medium) are just too much work, WTF does that say about the level of discourse here?
In the case of DSL, you CAN run a server, just not a dedicated internet server site. A Remote access server, personal FTP server, even a web or file server you run occasionally, even "most of the time" can not be considered a dedicated server.
Sorry, but that's not correct.
I'm not going to trawl through the link you provided, but I will point out that there are countless businesses using DSL lines to connect to the internet and I'll guarantee that many are running dedicated servers. If you doubt my words, talk to a Microsoft guy who specialises in SBS setups. Better yet, pick up the phone and give ATT's provisioning department a call.
Me, I have a residential line. I've been using it for years to host my own DNS and mail along with whatever else I need at any given time. ATT happily provides backup DNS. That would indicate they're complicit in my abusing their AUP, or that my setup is nothing other than ordinary.
Why, considering all the man hours I've put into it, I would have saved virtually hundreds of dollars by paying for a quality Microsoft product!
I can virtually gurantee that all those man hours you've put it in will yield benefits for years to come, many of which may not readily apparent. Unix Text Processing, for example, was first published in 1987. If you had read that book way back then, or read it for the first time last week, you can put the knowledge to good use on your new Ubuntu system.
By contrast, a seasoned Windows admin is typically someone who's amassed a stale collection of trivia consisting of GUI shortcuts, registry edits, familiarity with utilities provided by someone other than Microsoft to accomplish ordinary things, a mental list of workarounds for things that never seem to work right, and memories of DOS that just won't go away. If he's really good, he'll be able to cite KB numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
The market in question is a fairly small one, and the existence of the monopoly is the fault of the Swiss government rather than of Microsoft, but it appears to exist nonetheless.
If Switzerland is anything like the US, I'd wager the market you're referring to (federal, state and local contracts) is a lot larger than you think. Maybe someone can cite some real numbers, but I'd guess it outstrips anything in the private sector.
...to add to their massive data mining efforts. I can't even imagine the possibilities.
If they do, I hope for our sake it turns out better than their translations.
Somebody set us up the bomb.
Main screen turn on.
You have no chance to survive make your time.
For great justice.
"There's no such thing as soy milk. It's soy juice. But they couldn't sell soy juice, so they called it soy milk. Because anytime you say soy juice, you actually...start to gag. Know how come I know there's no such thing as soy milk? Because there's no soy titty, is there?"
- Lewis Black on Broadway
The year is 2009 and we have fat pipes, so you have little excuse for sticking to 1980s style text conversations.
You're suggesting, perhaps, that Slashdot offer the following options:
Plain Old Text
HTML Formatted
Extrans (html tags to text)
Code
Webcam
I'd think that would be impractical for a numer of reasons, not the least of which is that the moderation system would have to be changed to account for things like no underwear and manboobs.
As for the 1980's characterisation, I'll point out we've been using text for at last a few thousand years.
Any time something like this happens everyone from the first manager with the authority to do something that refuses all the way up the chain gets held responsible for whatever happens as a result of their refusal to act.
Then again, it's quite likely that the Sheriff Dale Williams will give both "Bob" from Customer Service in Bangalore, and his supervisor "Mr. Jones", an Unsatisfactory grade when completing the online Verizon Internet and Telephony Services Help Desk Experience questionnaire.
And the primary question is: is the problem a problem with the moral health of people, or is the problem a problem with the entertainment industry's business model?
You could probably argue the former, but like most things that take on a new and typically abstract form, there's too much pychological distance for morality to play a significant role. Financial crimes, for example, typically cause more real loss or damage to people's lives than a bank robbery, but are rarely considered as serious. That's why stealing a physical CD from a retail store can be considered taboo, but downloading digital files from the intarwebs will be viewed as something that's ordinary if not acceptable.
Then, of course, there's the issue of what a downloaded file is really worth. There's eleventy million mp3 files out there on the intarwebs, so individually, they can't possibly be worth very much, right? From the point of view of the casual downloader, the only monetary value associated with a few minutes of network activity is the electricity used to power the blinky lights. If downloading files is a crime, then its moral equivalency is telling your girlfriend that no, those jeans don't make her look fat.
Yesterday I found this [terminally...herent.com] wonderful gem of a blog post, which told me about a lot of applications which I can use from the CLI, as well as a series of blog posts from this [wordpress.com] guy, which give you a lot more ideas [wordpress.com] in terms of applications and how to set them up.
I've always wondered why such apps aren't more popular than they are. When used (albeit as a mockup) in a movie or on television, the audience goes "Wow!". That same audience goes home and says "No way!".
The argument, of course, is that it requires advanced knowledge, or that it's simply too hard. No matter that middle-aged secretaries had little trouble using or master disk formatting, file management or WordPerfect in the DOS days, or that the employees at the DMV or at Fry's counter are hardly compsci graduates.
Congrats on your discoveries. Be sure to checkout Soekris boards for more fun.
Well, it's less broken if you consider that in major metropolitan areas, cars do spend much of their time idling at traffic lights (typically with air conditioning running), as well as on congested city streets and freeways. Then, of course, there's the drive-thrus for those too fat to get out of their cars. ;-)
As for car analogies generally being stupid, yeah, you're right. But so are most of the alternatives. The reason why "sound bites", for example, are preferrable to hour-long analyses or 5,000 word flabby blog posts isn't that people don't want a full understanding, it's just that doing so is too much work. It's like having to evaluate a car purchase based on specifications instead of ... oh, wait.
Way ahead of you. http://adsweep.org/
I guess I'm ahead of everyone. ;-)
If I could only think up a cliched pun using the term forked ...
You're way ahead of me. I'm stuck at figuring out what "wrong side of the fork" means. Where's BadAnalogyGuy when you need him?
The current estimates range between half a million and four million women being held this way. I have no idea how accurate that is, but as such, I don't think it's anything like a gross exaggeration to make the claim that involuntary prostitution is real.
That "involuntary" prostitution is real no one is going to argue with. However, that's not to say the wild-assed estimates for "involuntary" prostitution are significant when compared to wild-assed estimates for for "voluntary" prostitution.
Again, you're tone is indistinguishable from what passes for journalism on those pseudo documentaries that litter the cable channels.
1. Cite wild-assed statistics for prostitution across the world.
2. Show video dramatic footage of widespread street-corner prostitution in various localities.
3. Get someone in authority to say that organised crime is involved in illegal immigration and immigrant smuggling, but leave the viewer with impression that prostitution is at the core.
5. Cite a few known cases of violent crime, child abuse, child prostitution, and then conflate those one-off cases with prostitution in general.
6. Make the assertion that prostitution includes all the above.
Works on the emotional level, but when you have a closer look, you see something else. Which is mostly women in poverty making shitty choices. The rest is tangential.
Some prostitutes are not willing prostitutes -- they've been forced into it.
If you believe in free will and choice, then you can't make that claim except in the rarest of circumstances (organised crime, one-off cases of kidnapping, etc.). The perception that any significant portion of prostitutes are "poor and innocent women being forced in slavery" is a gross exaggeration that makes for great TV, but has no basis in reality.
What we're talking about here is the poor who are forced into something every day of their lives and the list of what that includes is a mile long. More accurately, the choices the poor have are often choices between The Bad, The Really Bad, and the Truly Fucked.
Sucks to be poor. Or weak. Or stupid. Let's not dramatise things like this is a Victorian era novel. I don't know whether the city you live has any local mobsters, but I'll guarantee it's got an endless supply of young women looking for easy money.
When people complain that "prostitution cheapens women", they are exactly correct. Prostitution lowers the asking price for sexual services, which means that its legalization will increase what your female partner will be willing to do with you in bed. (Just look at all the direct and indirect costs of sex right now: dates, courtship, relationship, etc. etc. etc.)
Wow. This is probably the most outrageous things I've ever read on Slashdot. That said, you're probably right, but if you want to evaluate things using free market principles, you'll have to address the issues of monopoly power (the wife) and imperfect information (promises from a mistress you haven't yet slept with), among others.
Try buying a cigarette that isn't loaded with additives that just make the damn things even less healthy. Your choices are American Spirits and... yeah, hope they have American Spirits at the convenience store.
I don't give much credence to the "loaded with additives" description given that setting fire to something invariably produces something other than fresh air and rainbows, but be aware all cigarettes sold in the US and the EU, for example, are required to be "fire safe"[1].
That means it's loaded with an additive.
------------
1. Fire-safe is the government's oxymoronic term for a cigarette that doesn't burn well, requires repeated re-lighting, and taste like shit.
Unless the business world converts to a French way of living ...
A premise for a good joke, no doubt, but I'm having trouble getting the one that was already made. It's sunny in Paris? The French wear expensive glasses? R&D can't be done without long lunches and a pack of Gaulloise? Resenting the English increases market share?
because one guy (Noah Webster) in the 1800s thought it would be a really great idea to dumb down the language a bit
The blame, however, isn't solely Webster's. Surnames were routinely dumbed down by a mostly uneducated or illiterate populace, and both the spellings and pronunciations evolved over time into something very different (laughably so if you recognise the orginal).
Americans take pride in such things, so I guess it's a waste of effort asking them to reconsider the "correctness" of their ways. When I lived in Chicago, telling a cabbie that you lived on "Guthie" was a lot easier than pointing to a street sign that read "Goethe" and then engaging in a discussion of German language, culture and philosophy.
Quite possibly a Windows PowerUser(TM) who discovered that Linux file systems don't require the daily defragmentation that Windows' NFTS does, and is now having trouble finding something to do.
Thanks for the comments. And thanks to everyone else that replied!
Wow. Anyone able to use the words rhetoric, metonymy, synecdoche, and mete in the same post deserves the Slashdot Technical Achievement in a Non-Computing Category Award.
On the other hand, I wonder how many of those engaged in the study or writing of poetry didn't cringe at the "rhetorician" category.
...is that most of the "easy fruit" of reporting that basicly just being on site and report what's happening is easily done by regular people, there's always someone who likes to talk about it.
Time for another Slashdot Pop Quiz. Which of the following is most true?
a) Regular people are willing to regularly attend hearings on the local, state or federal level;
b) Regular people have a budget to attend and cover those hearings;
c) Regular people have an extensive network of contacts in local, state, or federal governments with whom they've developed relationships that facilitate ferreting out new stories, ongoing consent to both on and off-record quoting, and cross-checking facts; or
d) Regular people watch American Idol.
The answer is obviously (d). Now if you're feeling inspired, pick a topic. Doesn't have to be government. After you've spent a few weeks researching who the movers and shakers are, see if you can get your name and email address added to the list of folks who regularly receive information, say, something ordinary like press releases. Your odds are higher than trying to get someone important to actually take your calls, but those odds are probably still slim to none.
When you get round to discovering you've got nothing to contribute, you'll be ready to blog about it anyway along with countless others who are doing the same. Hopefully by then you've gained some respect for reporters, most of whom are employed by newspapers. If not, I guess we'll have to sit back and wait for that traffic accident, meteor landing in your backyard, or other one-off event to occur for you to play Regular Guy Reporter.
Perhaps as a Canadian I don't appreciate the finer points of the American political process, but I'm having trouble finding a meaningful relationship in this sequence of events:
1. Senate Hearing is scheduled.
2. Random Blog quotes unnamed "[s]enate sources" as saying "they were not aware of any debate surrounding his nomination."
3. Slashdot editors release a news story with a headline of "Senate Sources Say CTO Confirmation a Done Deal"
4. Thinly disguised editorial consisting mostly of anti-Microsoft remarks and an assertion that confirmation hearings are a sham process is submitted as a news story to Slashdot.
Sigh. I guess I'll have to reconsider Slashdot as primary source of news and go back to reading newspapers and watching C-SPAN.
Damn companies trying to trick me with that whole "making stuff I want to buy" scam.
LOL.
I'm not too fond of gadgets, but admittedly, that MIMO (or at least the functionality it provides) really caught my eye. I'd imagine something like it could one day be in everyone's living room.
Then again, most of the gadgets being sold today can be a real bitch for someone other than a Windows or Mac user. Even the simplest device, if advertised as standards compliant and requiring no special drivers, usually means "Might work in Linux, but probably won't for the BSDs". On that note, if anyone knows of a USB-serial adapter that works in FreeBSD, my notebook would love to hear from you.
"Dutch RIAA" doesn't mean they are affiliated with the (US) RIAA or that they have any relationship. All the phrase means is that they are the equivalent of the RIAA, in the Netherlands. In other words, that they have a similar purpose and so forth.
Sorry, but "Dutch RIAA" is ambiguous.
If the article submitter meant "the Dutch equivalent of the RIAA", he could have written words.
Words have meaning. Being too lazy to use them, or using them incorrectly narrows your audience to those who have trouble reading, lack critical thinking abilities, or otherwise make assumptions that just happen to coincide with yours. That, and an invitation for everyone to question whether you're a moron or simply illiterate who possibly has something to say.
Then again, if efforts to be meaningful and accurate (especially in a written medium) are just too much work, WTF does that say about the level of discourse here?
In the case of DSL, you CAN run a server, just not a dedicated internet server site. A Remote access server, personal FTP server, even a web or file server you run occasionally, even "most of the time" can not be considered a dedicated server.
Sorry, but that's not correct.
I'm not going to trawl through the link you provided, but I will point out that there are countless businesses using DSL lines to connect to the internet and I'll guarantee that many are running dedicated servers. If you doubt my words, talk to a Microsoft guy who specialises in SBS setups. Better yet, pick up the phone and give ATT's provisioning department a call.
Me, I have a residential line. I've been using it for years to host my own DNS and mail along with whatever else I need at any given time. ATT happily provides backup DNS. That would indicate they're complicit in my abusing their AUP, or that my setup is nothing other than ordinary.
Why, considering all the man hours I've put into it, I would have saved virtually hundreds of dollars by paying for a quality Microsoft product!
I can virtually gurantee that all those man hours you've put it in will yield benefits for years to come, many of which may not readily apparent. Unix Text Processing, for example, was first published in 1987. If you had read that book way back then, or read it for the first time last week, you can put the knowledge to good use on your new Ubuntu system.
By contrast, a seasoned Windows admin is typically someone who's amassed a stale collection of trivia consisting of GUI shortcuts, registry edits, familiarity with utilities provided by someone other than Microsoft to accomplish ordinary things, a mental list of workarounds for things that never seem to work right, and memories of DOS that just won't go away. If he's really good, he'll be able to cite KB numbers.