The talking snake kinda did it for me early on, also the stupidity of putting trees with fruit on that man (with a childlike innocence and therefore CAN"T be blamed for eating them) wasn't allowed to eat! A search for "gervais on genesis" is an hilarious part of the Ricky Gervais Animals tour that explains the bible and genesis beautifully!
The only difference is that people like Richard Dawkins are actually very talented and educated people, but unlike the majority of religous fanatics who espouse "creationism" and "intelligent design", they are also very intelligent and rational in their thinking and present effective arguments. As opposed to Creationists arguments being based on "everything you believe is rubbish because the Bible says so!"
I think the best quote I have ever seen is "Arguing over religion is like fighting over who has the best imaginary friend!".
I'm not saying there is or isn't a GOD, but I do wholeheartedly believe that the bible (created by MEN centuries AFTER the supposed birth of Christ) is nothing more than a means to an end for the established churches and religions around the world to exercise and justify torture, among other things, and complete control over people.
If this is just one-offs in judgement as indicated, big deal! There's a vast difference between people like the completely useless bozo I unfortunately work with who spends the entire day alternating bewteen MSN, and Facebook, and people who might access the odd online shop or whatever inbetween work. It's funny how the OZ Gov can blow billions on wasteful projects, (the insulation scheme of death comes to mind, along with Myki), but they worry about a number of people who might have used internet for a non-work related issue?
I haven't run antivirus software in years and I've never had a virus.
I'd say there's a very good chance you have viruses and/or trojans already but just don't know it.
On my home network it's a constant battle not only with the staid sites I use but especially with the sites the teenagers frequent to keep machines clean.
These days you just cannot afford to not run anti-virus if you have your machine connected to any network or use any form of USB devices, and this is especially so if you use your machines for any type of online banking/financial transactions!
I run multiple packages, Comodo free firewall/IDS, Peerblock, and Trend Anti-virus. As the i5 and i7 CPU's have all the grunt you could want, having several background security apps running now doesn't have any appreciable performance impact on a system.
Seriously! WTF! "he had the opportunity to speak"!, would this perhaps be before or after he is handed over to the US and is being waterboarded or having bamboo shoots under the nails for exposing ILLEGAL corparate and government clandestine activities?
If you were being actively framed and targeted as he is very clearly is, i'm fairly sure the LAST thing YOU would do would be to go and place your self at their feet, for them to do whatever they want before you accidentally "fell" down a flight of stairs onto several bullets!
Ummmm... they made a small font!
Who cares?
How does this crap even make it to tech sites?
On another note, I once drew a stick figure with mud when I was a kid!
The only problem is that with a lot of the current crop of USB oscope's the sample rate is shockingly low compared to the unit cost, so some of them are a real false economy as you get what seems to be cheap'ish, but doesn't present a really useful range. I think the problem for most newcomers is that they don't understand the sample rate and may not be aware that the you beaut USB Oscope they bought for $100's may actually be completely useless for most of what they want to use it for. Horses for courses really. This is where the Rigol DS1052E is really in a class of it's own, at a price that can't be beat! For a $450AU scope it's pretty hard to compare anything else to it.
Dave on EEVblog actually has a few shows on this topic that break it down quite well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev121xAt_k4
I would strongly recommend a good second hand analog one like the Tektronix 465 series which are rock solid and very cheap, and a for digital a DSO such as the Rigol (who make some of Agilent's stuff) DS1052E, this is a 50MHz 1Gs/rate and beautifully manufactured. The upside of this is that is the exact same model as the 100MHz version, so with a very trivial software hack you can turn this sub $500 DSO into a $1000 100MHz version!
I would then recommend a good Digital Logic Analyser, for around $400 you can get the Intronix LA1032 (I think is the model) which is possbily the best unit on the market under $1500!
View the EEVBLOG's (google it) to see the problems with DLA's and DSO's.
So for under $1200 you get a 100MHz new DSO, a 100MHz S/H CRO, and a 32 Channel DLA!
All you need to drop any unsuccessful SSH logins for a specified period of seconds./usr/sbin/iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -i eth1 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set/usr/sbin/iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -i eth1 -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 1000 --hitcount 2 -j DROP
Eth1 is obviously your public NIC --hitcount is the number tries allowed --seconds is, well, seconds the IP is dropped into a bit bucket for!
Your an idiot! Sorry but I can't see any other way to put it in terms that you might actually understand.
Clearly you have NO idea what MOST IT departments or REAL data centres run like. You know, the ones in the real world that were built by an ever changing bunch of people and developers who float between departments and jobs, never adequately document anything they do, create all manner of bizarre work arounds and tricks to either make up for OS or design limitations or bad design, never budget or even PLAN for the (cough, cough!) EXTREMELY UNLIKELY scenario that the server might actually fail, and when it does and the people who actually know how it works, or even know how to properly do application restores, aren't around, and your getting the call at the footy on Saturday arvo to "GET IT WORKING".
You can bitch and moan all you want about processes and procedures, backup and restore documents, but in the many years I've been working, I have invariably found that if the group responsible for deploying a service, can offload that onto the IT dept, that's exactly what happens. And usually with NO EXTRA BUDGET to cover things like, you know, tape units, tapes, etc, etc.
So if my positive experience using ESX sounds like a sales pitch, then hell yeah! It has saved me enormous amounts of head-aches, time, etc, while providing complete fault-tolerance. You know, the kind of things most departments EXPECT from the IT guys but NEVER actually budget for! Using it I can now run and manage literally hundreds of servers with ease, compared to constantly chasing my tail looking after a fraction of that in out-dated and unsupported physicals that no-one wants to rebuild or replace!
I would actually say that the day ESXi became free, it made server completely obsolete for ANYTHING other than initial testing or building.
As you stated, this article really on every level is a ridicuously poorly designed implimentation, I don't get into flame wars as to what's the better OS, etc, etc, so far as I'm concerned whatever is best at doing what I need it to is the solution I aim for, and with ESX I must admit I have been extremely happy with the time and resource savings, as well as the GREATLY reduced management overhead. Throw in the HA, DRS, vMotion, and disaster recovery, and I now sleep a lot better at night, and get far fewer calls!
In my opinion it always comes down to the fact that shelling out some money for a good product always beats trying to stuff around with a "free" one that's hard to configure and maintain. I run 4 ESX farms, and have NO problem rolling out virtually any type of server from Oracle/RHEL, to Win2k3/2k8, and everything inbetween. I simply make sure I allocate enough resources, and NEVER over commit. I did a cost analysis ages back trying to convince management we needed to go down the virtualisation path to guarantee business continuity.
In the end it took the failure of our most critical CRM server crashing and me importing an Acronis backup of it into ESX that convinced them beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I would say to anyone, something for $15-20K that gives:
Fault-tolerance Fail-over Easy server roll-outs Simple network re-configuration Almost instant recoverability of machines
Is more than worth the cost! The true cost of NOT doing it can be the end of a business, or as I have seen, several days of data/productivity lost!
Performance issues? Reliability issues? I have none at all, the only times i've had issues are poorly developed.NET apps, IIS, etc, which I then dump the stats and give them to the developers to get them to clean up their own code. And more than once I've had to restore an entire server because someones scripts deleted or screwed entire data structures, and in a case like that, being able to restore a 120GB virtual in around 30mins from the comfort of my desk or home really beats locating tapes, cataloging them, restoring, etc, etc.
I have Fibre SAN's (with a mix of F/C, SAS, and SATA disks) and switches, so the SAN just shrugs off any attempt to I/O bind it! The only limitation I can think of is the 4 virtual NIC's, it would be good for some of our products to be able to provide a much higher number.
I have no doubt at all that it works that way for a lot of people!
I'm definitely not saying all HR people are tarred with the same brush, but some of the ones I've dealt with over the years make you wonder how they got a job in the first place.
And just remember, the internet abounds with proof that all you need to do to ruin someone's career is to throw a little mud, whether it's true or not is of no relevance at all. People like nasty rumors and quite happily spread them.
"effectively giving MySpace the power to dictate criminal law." is a load of rubbish, people need to read TFA before making statements like that. Lori was prosecuted for using a fake account to ILLEGALLY HARASS and VICTIMISE A MINOR!
The prosecution used the available and existing laws to ensure some sort of punishment for this crime as it generally fell into a non-existing law area. No laws were changed, no laws were trampled on. Unless people sign terms of agreement anywhere, AND intend to mis-represent themselves AND harass and victimise minors to the point of physical/mental harm or death, they have NOTHING to fear.
Period!
But if they do have that intention, they deserve everything they get.
GOD forbid anyone should be held responsible for their actions, or be expected to have any kind of grip on reality. I think people maybe need to realise that sometimes it's not the TV's fault, or the computers fault, or anyone else's fault, perhaps some people really have no concept of consequences until they are sharing a cell with Bubba. I'm pretty sure they are able to catch with reality real quick then.
Like every one in the medical field ( like all fields), there are quacks, good quality professionals, and outright idiots. I've had enough injuries and medical problems to deal with myself and formy family over the years to find that Chiropractors can be tarred with the SAME brush all others are tarred with. When my son had unbeleivable growth spurts and developed aound a 30% spine deviation (Scoliosis) we lucked onto a Chiro after doing the rounds and got fantastic and reasonably priced treatment. On the other hand one "Specialist" wanted to have him admitted to hospital for an operation where they attach a "straightening" framework to his spine for a period of time!
I do fully agree that Chiro's can be seen to be money suckers, but I can say the same for many, many other specialists, doctors, and others in many fields of health and medicine. To label them all as quacks though I think is quite unfair.
The moral I think is that NO doctor or provider is GOD, and if they don't what to do, and cfan't admit it, they need to be avoided. We have had some absolutely shocking treatment over the years, but we have also found some fantastic, compassionate and most importantly, well qualified providers that we hang onto.
I think it's the old method of promoting imcompetence to make yourself look superb by comparison, I know of several large companies that have management who employ this tactic.
Although I think Senator Conroy is an ignoramus of the highest order, full kudos to the government for not bending the rules just because Telstra wants it. Telstra has always done it's absolute best to stifle any form of innovation that doesn't generate obscene amounts of money ONLY for Telstra, all the while p*ssing on our backs and telling us it's raining. I live in a 60-80 year old suburb 20 mins from the city and my home is 4.6k's from the exchange! It took me 5 years when we moved to get DSL. No equipment was changed or upgraded, Telstra simply downgraded the test requirements so my home JUST fell into a supported speed and reliability range. I still have to have a Telstra phoneline just so I can have DSL provided by another company.
There are any number of very capable providers out there who can step up to the plate, and provide a service without the crap you have to put up with Telstra. It's about time Sol got told where to go!
Surely something can be done short-term to put the brakes on the massive pay claims to bring them this si8de of reality, aside from the legitimacy of the actual complaints?
I think it would be really hard to find a more decent and down to earth person as yourself, who champions the less fortunates cause.
I must admit I am always in admiration of the way you conduct yourself in an environment that can be as abrasive as/.
Kudos to you!
For all the other people who like to trivialize these issues, talks cheap, I have NO DOUBT that if it was you on the receiving end, your views would change considerably.
As someone who works for a very large multi-national corporation, i've noticed the following trends:
Large companies that have rigourous HR involvement almost always require some sort of Higher Ed or preferably degree, and not always because they think it will mean a better employee, it's just that it makes the interview process a lot easier for them, and helps them pre-select candidates that then move to dealing directly with the boss of the particular department that's hiring. When HR is involved, quite often they are a filter. This can be a complete roadblock in some cases.
Motivation and attitude count for everything, everything!, I couldn't stress this enough!
Smaller and even larger companies that more or less restrict HR involvment during the selection process will generally be a lot more receptive to skills and experience, especially if the person interviewing is also technically minded and you can demonstrate your keenness, and ability to work as productive member of a team. If your being interviewed by the actual department hiring, you stand a much better chance, as they aren't interested in dotting i's and checking boxes like HR, they just want results, which means if your experience or qualifications are a bit lacking, you have a chance to make up for that by exhibiting motivation and a willingness to learn on your own, (on your own is important).
Degrees, Batchelors, CCNA, etc, don't really matter quite to the extent that some people imply, while they are very valuable, and will certainly help get past early interview stages, and while a lack of them can be an obvious detriment, quite often being able to show continous studies even in various unrelated fields (myself electronics initially!) can really help open a door, but you might need to push it home as to what you can bring to the role and offer as value for the company.
I originally started out as a one day a week casual and over a period of 5 years ended up looking after the infrastructure for a number of departments, before moving through various roles including network engineer, senior sys admin, all within the same company. I'm now responsible for several ESX clusters, around 100 servers, as well as numerous other projects and support for within our own business unit as well as quite a few others. I achieved all this through sheer hard work, never complaining at the long hours, the stressful load, all the while training myself as most times we were too busy working on projects to take time off for training. Management notice these things and a good company will reward you well for it. Several others at work (who even started before me) have never advanced in the last ten years from when they first started, but that is entirely because of their attitude, management want people who are flexible, committed, and above all, capable.
Umm...ESX vMotion does. And I use it heavily. Flawless execution every time. Except for when some idiot mis-configures one of the nodes settings and it baulks.
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The talking snake kinda did it for me early on, also the stupidity of putting trees with fruit on that man (with a childlike innocence and therefore CAN"T be blamed for eating them) wasn't allowed to eat! A search for "gervais on genesis" is an hilarious part of the Ricky Gervais Animals tour that explains the bible and genesis beautifully!
But he is responsible for everything, seeing as it's God's Will! ;-)
The only difference is that people like Richard Dawkins are actually very talented and educated people, but unlike the majority of religous fanatics who espouse "creationism" and "intelligent design", they are also very intelligent and rational in their thinking and present effective arguments. As opposed to Creationists arguments being based on "everything you believe is rubbish because the Bible says so!" I think the best quote I have ever seen is "Arguing over religion is like fighting over who has the best imaginary friend!". I'm not saying there is or isn't a GOD, but I do wholeheartedly believe that the bible (created by MEN centuries AFTER the supposed birth of Christ) is nothing more than a means to an end for the established churches and religions around the world to exercise and justify torture, among other things, and complete control over people.
If this is just one-offs in judgement as indicated, big deal! There's a vast difference between people like the completely useless bozo I unfortunately work with who spends the entire day alternating bewteen MSN, and Facebook, and people who might access the odd online shop or whatever inbetween work. It's funny how the OZ Gov can blow billions on wasteful projects, (the insulation scheme of death comes to mind, along with Myki), but they worry about a number of people who might have used internet for a non-work related issue?
I haven't run antivirus software in years and I've never had a virus.
I'd say there's a very good chance you have viruses and/or trojans already but just don't know it. On my home network it's a constant battle not only with the staid sites I use but especially with the sites the teenagers frequent to keep machines clean. These days you just cannot afford to not run anti-virus if you have your machine connected to any network or use any form of USB devices, and this is especially so if you use your machines for any type of online banking/financial transactions! I run multiple packages, Comodo free firewall/IDS, Peerblock, and Trend Anti-virus. As the i5 and i7 CPU's have all the grunt you could want, having several background security apps running now doesn't have any appreciable performance impact on a system.
Seriously! WTF! "he had the opportunity to speak"!, would this perhaps be before or after he is handed over to the US and is being waterboarded or having bamboo shoots under the nails for exposing ILLEGAL corparate and government clandestine activities? If you were being actively framed and targeted as he is very clearly is, i'm fairly sure the LAST thing YOU would do would be to go and place your self at their feet, for them to do whatever they want before you accidentally "fell" down a flight of stairs onto several bullets!
Ummmm... they made a small font! Who cares? How does this crap even make it to tech sites? On another note, I once drew a stick figure with mud when I was a kid!
The only problem is that with a lot of the current crop of USB oscope's the sample rate is shockingly low compared to the unit cost, so some of them are a real false economy as you get what seems to be cheap'ish, but doesn't present a really useful range. I think the problem for most newcomers is that they don't understand the sample rate and may not be aware that the you beaut USB Oscope they bought for $100's may actually be completely useless for most of what they want to use it for. Horses for courses really. This is where the Rigol DS1052E is really in a class of it's own, at a price that can't be beat! For a $450AU scope it's pretty hard to compare anything else to it. Dave on EEVblog actually has a few shows on this topic that break it down quite well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev121xAt_k4
I would strongly recommend a good second hand analog one like the Tektronix 465 series which are rock solid and very cheap, and a for digital a DSO such as the Rigol (who make some of Agilent's stuff) DS1052E, this is a 50MHz 1Gs/rate and beautifully manufactured. The upside of this is that is the exact same model as the 100MHz version, so with a very trivial software hack you can turn this sub $500 DSO into a $1000 100MHz version! I would then recommend a good Digital Logic Analyser, for around $400 you can get the Intronix LA1032 (I think is the model) which is possbily the best unit on the market under $1500! View the EEVBLOG's (google it) to see the problems with DLA's and DSO's. So for under $1200 you get a 100MHz new DSO, a 100MHz S/H CRO, and a 32 Channel DLA!
Sorry, text came out crap for some reason, trying again to make it clearer.
/usr/sbin/iptables -I INPU= T -p tcp --dport 22 -i eth1 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set
/usr/sbin/iptables -I INPU= T -p tcp --dport 22 -i eth1 -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seco= nds 1000 --hitcount 2 -j DROP
All you need to drop any unsuccessful SSH logins for a specified period of seconds. /usr/sbin/iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -i eth1 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set /usr/sbin/iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -i eth1 -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 1000 --hitcount 2 -j DROP
Eth1 is obviously your public NIC
--hitcount is the number tries allowed
--seconds is, well, seconds the IP is dropped into a bit bucket for!
Your an idiot! Sorry but I can't see any other way to put it in terms that you might actually understand.
Clearly you have NO idea what MOST IT departments or REAL data centres run like. You know, the ones in the real world that were built by an ever changing bunch of people and developers who float between departments and jobs, never adequately document anything they do, create all manner of bizarre work arounds and tricks to either make up for OS or design limitations or bad design, never budget or even PLAN for the (cough, cough!) EXTREMELY UNLIKELY scenario that the server might actually fail, and when it does and the people who actually know how it works, or even know how to properly do application restores, aren't around, and your getting the call at the footy on Saturday arvo to "GET IT WORKING".
You can bitch and moan all you want about processes and procedures, backup and restore documents, but in the many years I've been working, I have invariably found that if the group responsible for deploying a service, can offload that onto the IT dept, that's exactly what happens. And usually with NO EXTRA BUDGET to cover things like, you know, tape units, tapes, etc, etc.
So if my positive experience using ESX sounds like a sales pitch, then hell yeah! It has saved me enormous amounts of head-aches, time, etc, while providing complete fault-tolerance. You know, the kind of things most departments EXPECT from the IT guys but NEVER actually budget for! Using it I can now run and manage literally hundreds of servers with ease, compared to constantly chasing my tail looking after a fraction of that in out-dated and unsupported physicals that no-one wants to rebuild or replace!
Moron!
I would actually say that the day ESXi became free, it made server completely obsolete for ANYTHING other than initial testing or building.
As you stated, this article really on every level is a ridicuously poorly designed implimentation, I don't get into flame wars as to what's the better OS, etc, etc, so far as I'm concerned whatever is best at doing what I need it to is the solution I aim for, and with ESX I must admit I have been extremely happy with the time and resource savings, as well as the GREATLY reduced management overhead. Throw in the HA, DRS, vMotion, and disaster recovery, and I now sleep a lot better at night, and get far fewer calls!
In my opinion it always comes down to the fact that shelling out some money for a good product always beats trying to stuff around with a "free" one that's hard to configure and maintain. I run 4 ESX farms, and have NO problem rolling out virtually any type of server from Oracle/RHEL, to Win2k3/2k8, and everything inbetween. I simply make sure I allocate enough resources, and NEVER over commit. I did a cost analysis ages back trying to convince management we needed to go down the virtualisation path to guarantee business continuity.
In the end it took the failure of our most critical CRM server crashing and me importing an Acronis backup of it into ESX that convinced them beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I would say to anyone, something for $15-20K that gives:
Fault-tolerance
Fail-over
Easy server roll-outs
Simple network re-configuration
Almost instant recoverability of machines
Is more than worth the cost! The true cost of NOT doing it can be the end of a business, or as I have seen, several days of data/productivity lost!
Performance issues? Reliability issues? I have none at all, the only times i've had issues are poorly developed .NET apps, IIS, etc, which I then dump the stats and give them to the developers to get them to clean up their own code. And more than once I've had to restore an entire server because someones scripts deleted or screwed entire data structures, and in a case like that, being able to restore a 120GB virtual in around 30mins from the comfort of my desk or home really beats locating tapes, cataloging them, restoring, etc, etc.
I have Fibre SAN's (with a mix of F/C, SAS, and SATA disks) and switches, so the SAN just shrugs off any attempt to I/O bind it! The only limitation I can think of is the 4 virtual NIC's, it would be good for some of our products to be able to provide a much higher number.
No comparison in my opinion.
I have no doubt at all that it works that way for a lot of people!
I'm definitely not saying all HR people are tarred with the same brush, but some of the ones I've dealt with over the years make you wonder how they got a job in the first place.
And just remember, the internet abounds with proof that all you need to do to ruin someone's career is to throw a little mud, whether it's true or not is of no relevance at all. People like nasty rumors and quite happily spread them.
"effectively giving MySpace the power to dictate criminal law." is a load of rubbish, people need to read TFA before making statements like that. Lori was prosecuted for using a fake account to ILLEGALLY HARASS and VICTIMISE A MINOR!
The prosecution used the available and existing laws to ensure some sort of punishment for this crime as it generally fell into a non-existing law area. No laws were changed, no laws were trampled on. Unless people sign terms of agreement anywhere, AND intend to mis-represent themselves AND harass and victimise minors to the point of physical/mental harm or death, they have NOTHING to fear.
Period!
But if they do have that intention, they deserve everything they get.
I'd be guessing from the article as he had the intent and planned it for weeks it would have been a stabbing or bashing if he didn't have the gun.
GOD forbid anyone should be held responsible for their actions, or be expected to have any kind of grip on reality. I think people maybe need to realise that sometimes it's not the TV's fault, or the computers fault, or anyone else's fault, perhaps some people really have no concept of consequences until they are sharing a cell with Bubba. I'm pretty sure they are able to catch with reality real quick then.
Like every one in the medical field ( like all fields), there are quacks, good quality professionals, and outright idiots. I've had enough injuries and medical problems to deal with myself and formy family over the years to find that Chiropractors can be tarred with the SAME brush all others are tarred with. When my son had unbeleivable growth spurts and developed aound a 30% spine deviation (Scoliosis) we lucked onto a Chiro after doing the rounds and got fantastic and reasonably priced treatment. On the other hand one "Specialist" wanted to have him admitted to hospital for an operation where they attach a "straightening" framework to his spine for a period of time!
I do fully agree that Chiro's can be seen to be money suckers, but I can say the same for many, many other specialists, doctors, and others in many fields of health and medicine. To label them all as quacks though I think is quite unfair.
The moral I think is that NO doctor or provider is GOD, and if they don't what to do, and cfan't admit it, they need to be avoided. We have had some absolutely shocking treatment over the years, but we have also found some fantastic, compassionate and most importantly, well qualified providers that we hang onto.
I think it's the old method of promoting imcompetence to make yourself look superb by comparison, I know of several large companies that have management who employ this tactic.
Although I think Senator Conroy is an ignoramus of the highest order, full kudos to the government for not bending the rules just because Telstra wants it. Telstra has always done it's absolute best to stifle any form of innovation that doesn't generate obscene amounts of money ONLY for Telstra, all the while p*ssing on our backs and telling us it's raining. I live in a 60-80 year old suburb 20 mins from the city and my home is 4.6k's from the exchange! It took me 5 years when we moved to get DSL. No equipment was changed or upgraded, Telstra simply downgraded the test requirements so my home JUST fell into a supported speed and reliability range. I still have to have a Telstra phoneline just so I can have DSL provided by another company.
There are any number of very capable providers out there who can step up to the plate, and provide a service without the crap you have to put up with Telstra. It's about time Sol got told where to go!
$2.10, $18.90, $8000, is there a difference?
Surely something can be done short-term to put the brakes on the massive pay claims to bring them this si8de of reality, aside from the legitimacy of the actual complaints?
Well put Ray!
I think it would be really hard to find a more decent and down to earth person as yourself, who champions the less fortunates cause.
I must admit I am always in admiration of the way you conduct yourself in an environment that can be as abrasive as /.
Kudos to you!
For all the other people who like to trivialize these issues, talks cheap, I have NO DOUBT that if it was you on the receiving end, your views would change considerably.
As someone who works for a very large multi-national corporation, i've noticed the following trends:
Large companies that have rigourous HR involvement almost always require some sort of Higher Ed or preferably degree, and not always because they think it will mean a better employee, it's just that it makes the interview process a lot easier for them, and helps them pre-select candidates that then move to dealing directly with the boss of the particular department that's hiring. When HR is involved, quite often they are a filter. This can be a complete roadblock in some cases.
Motivation and attitude count for everything, everything!, I couldn't stress this enough!
Smaller and even larger companies that more or less restrict HR involvment during the selection process will generally be a lot more receptive to skills and experience, especially if the person interviewing is also technically minded and you can demonstrate your keenness, and ability to work as productive member of a team. If your being interviewed by the actual department hiring, you stand a much better chance, as they aren't interested in dotting i's and checking boxes like HR, they just want results, which means if your experience or qualifications are a bit lacking, you have a chance to make up for that by exhibiting motivation and a willingness to learn on your own, (on your own is important).
Degrees, Batchelors, CCNA, etc, don't really matter quite to the extent that some people imply, while they are very valuable, and will certainly help get past early interview stages, and while a lack of them can be an obvious detriment, quite often being able to show continous studies even in various unrelated fields (myself electronics initially!) can really help open a door, but you might need to push it home as to what you can bring to the role and offer as value for the company.
I originally started out as a one day a week casual and over a period of 5 years ended up looking after the infrastructure for a number of departments, before moving through various roles including network engineer, senior sys admin, all within the same company. I'm now responsible for several ESX clusters, around 100 servers, as well as numerous other projects and support for within our own business unit as well as quite a few others. I achieved all this through sheer hard work, never complaining at the long hours, the stressful load, all the while training myself as most times we were too busy working on projects to take time off for training. Management notice these things and a good company will reward you well for it. Several others at work (who even started before me) have never advanced in the last ten years from when they first started, but that is entirely because of their attitude, management want people who are flexible, committed, and above all, capable.
Umm...ESX vMotion does. And I use it heavily. Flawless execution every time. Except for when some idiot mis-configures one of the nodes settings and it baulks.