When ah were a lad, the clusters in the medical department were the place to be (except for the cretins measuring graphs on the screen by using a biro and a ruler). Then they re-vamped library cluster and we moved in there (and did lots of naughty things with their root password).
Anyway, we used to download stuff in a "decent cluster" onto the temp storage of one of their Sun servers, then wander off to an out-of-the-way shitty cluster with no watchers, bung a zip-drive in the parallel port, start it copying, go and have a few pints, and then return for our ill-gotten gain.
If you dig out the usage logs for the UCS, our flat's login's bandwidth usage were the highest or amongst the highest 3 years running. >)
The Comp. Sci. dept's cluster generally sucked (plus the admins watched a lot closer than the UCS's admins).
We had to be final-year students to get a (real) key to the Comp. Sci's 'puter lab at the time (was great in my final year - I went into the lab at 22:00 or so and left as soon as the first person appeared in the morning - whole lab to myself for a good 8 hours usually).
