Quickly Filling Up 150GB of Legal Media Files?

Fred Nowicki asks: "If you have ever used the P2P client Direct Connect (or DC++) to find media on the Internet, you know that the best hubs have ridiculous sharing requirements, i.e., over 100GB. It isn't too difficult to amass a collection of 100GB of illegal movies and MP3s with all the crap that's out there, but I'd like to play it straight: I want to collect 150GB of pure legal stuff. So here's my million dollar question: What is the best and fastest way for me achieve this? I want to offer interesting, neat stuff (movies, music, programs, etc.), not just Linux distros, mind you. One thing I've found so far is a mirror of the Prelinger Archives on archive.org, which offers over 37GB of wacky, interesting stuff on divx format (in MPEG-2, it's over 350GB, but that seems like cheating if I take that route). One downside of this site is that it's not a very fast connection (about 50KB/sec through their FTP via my cable modem -- I'd like a throughput of at least 100KB/sec). I've considered mirroring the Gutenberg project, but there are all sorts of redistribution issues with a bunch of their files, and I don't want to go through all that hassle. Come on, Slashdot. Give me some URLs!"

The easy solution

[nstrom]

cat /dev/zero > file

100gb, no problem!

[DBordello]

Doesn't EVERYBODY have 100gb of 'something special' or is that just me.

What about 10.000 CD-ROMs?

[gmuslera]

Something of this was posted in this [slashdot.org] recent slashdot story.

Re:The easy solution

[Ziviyr]

BZ2 that an'd you'll be better off with the 50K/s source.

So let me get this straight...

[Zork the Almighty]

So let me get this straight, you want to amass 150GB of free, public domain files, to access even larger repositories of copyrighted material to which you are not entitled ?

Don't give him ANY URLS!!!

[gorjusborg]

Don't take part in a tainting of a perfectly illegal p2p network. :)

wget!!

[jiminim]

wget -r http://*

Yeah, I know it won't really work...

mysql dump of the slashdot database

[codepunk]

slashdot.sql that should do it, just imagine the social value of all that data.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Andorion]

Only for research purposes, of course!

(/Pete Townshend)

-Berj

Homemade Pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple. Homemade pornography is the answer. Film yourself, friends or other consenting adults engaging in wholesome sexual fun. Encode your porn into SVCD format (the most popular format for getting porn and being able to watch it in a standalone player). Pick a suitable quality level for both the audio and video and you'll quickly see that a 1 hour high quality porn should need approximately 4 700MB CD-Rs for distribution over Direct Connect. That's 2.8 gigs per movie. Now you just need to make 36 such movies and you'll be over the 100 gig sharing restriction.

Re:The easy solution

[Mitchell Mebane]

That's no good. Variety is the spice of life, you know.

cat /dev/urandom > file

Re:So let me get this straight...

[KDan]

Don't worry, he'll delete it after a 24-hour trial period. Daniel

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

how about

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/mnt/bigdrive/junk.file count=how_big_you_need_it_to_be ...otherwise, you're gonna have to go with a make file, packaging, versioning, cvs that baby up, GPL it, have msft sue you for infringement. All for printing some random characters =)

Re:Why pass the program CL arguments?

[smoondog]

I love /. This is the place where I can write a joke comment made in passing critiqued for the quality of the code written within it. Perhaps you should post a follow-up complaining about the uselessness of writing a file with rand() calls?

-Sean

Ask Slashdot: My Question

[rh2600]

Instead of actually asking a serious, important or thought provoking question that actually contributes something to this universe.I will ask what has become the standard type of Ask Slashdot Question.

What is the most pointless geeky question I can ask slashdot that will serve no other purpose but get people talking about the banal and irrelevant. My goal is to spend a lot of time and money, hacking something together that really has no purpose other than to amuse my own sad little life, and hopefully impress fellow slashdotters and provide them with funny anecdotes to share around the lunch table - "Hey some guy on slashdot is building a beowulf cluster out of 3000 gameboy advances, and he wanted to know the best colour to get!"

My end goal is to have wasted everybody's time because I probably won't start on the idea, and if I do it will wind up being an unfinished project on my personal website featuring pictures of my cat.

Re:The easy solution

[cuyler]

cat /dev/urandom > file

Actually, using /dev/zero is a better idea. Using /dev/urandom you never know, you may randomly get a Metallica song and then you're screwed. Not only will the hard drive contain illegal items but Metallica will ban you from ever using /dev/urandom again.

(Sorry, still bitter for getting kicked off of Napster the same day I bought a $40 Metallica CD that I had also downloaded)...

Re:The solution

[damiam]

cat /dev/urandom > /mnt/bigvolume/data.out would be a lot faster and simpler.

Re:The easy solution

[rongen]

Actually, using /dev/zero is a better idea. Using /dev/urandom you never know, you may randomly get a Metallica song and then you're screwed.

Not to mention the fact that you would get WAY better compression...

Think about where you're posting from

[42forty-two42]

Mirror slashdotted webpages!

Re:Homemade Pornography

[debrain]

Simple. Homemade pornography is the answer. Film yourself, friends or other consenting adults engaging in wholesome sexual fun. Encode your porn into SVCD format (the most popular format for getting porn and being able to watch it in a standalone player). Pick a suitable quality level for both the audio and video and you'll quickly see that a 1 hour high quality porn should need approximately 4 700MB CD-Rs for distribution over Direct Connect. That's 2.8 gigs per movie. Now you just need to make 36 such movies and you'll be over the 100 gig sharing restriction.

You've thought about that way too much, and it shows. :)

Open Music Registry

[Radical Rad]

This site [openmusicregistry.org] provides a database of music and other audio works published under the terms of the Open Audio License. Artists may register their works for free, and music fans may browse the database for free.

Redistribution seems to be OK just by including the 'Open Audio statement'. About like including the GPL when you restribute source code.

Re:The easy solution

[OrangeSpyderMan]

If you get a Metallica song out of /dev/urandom, it's fine, because their copyright doesn't apply if you produced it independently.

"No, You Honor, I know you don't believe me, but it *did* come from /dev/urandom..."

I can hear sighs of relief from p2p network users preparing their defence :-)

Mirror Independent Movies?

[localman]

You can mirror my movie Vendetta: A Christmas Story [crazyeddy.com]. Mirror all the QuickTime content and you'll have 378 MB. It's under a creative commons license, so knock yourself out :)

I imagine there are many mucisians who would enjoy the free bandwidth as well, although movies will get you bulked up with less inode usage ;)

gasp!

[zozzi]

isn't that how britney's latest (all?) album(s) were produced?

Re:The easy solution

[Jason1729]

An infinite number of users using /dev/urandom on an infinite number of computers will produce the entire RIAA library instantly.

...and probably some good music too.

Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]

Fast URLs from Slashdot?

[iapetus]

One downside of this site is that it's not a very fast connection (about 50KB/sec through their FTP via my cable modem -- I'd like a throughput of at least 100KB/sec). [...] Come on, Slashdot. Give me some URLs!

You want to find a site which has had its URL posted to Slashdot and still manages to give 100KB/sec throughput?

You must be new around here...

Re:One word...

[isorox]

Damm, I thought you said Gnomes!

Re:Find someone with the data and fedex a hard dri

[Bald Wookie]

Now that you mention it, I've got a couple hundred gigs of great public domain content right here. Just send me the hard drives and beer and I'll get started...