I love this ballast file idea. It reminds me of a programming story by Noel Llopis[0] where a game developer was working with a strict memory limit and placed static char buffer[1024 * 1024 * 2]; in the code as an insurance policy[1]:

[0] http://gamesfromwithin.com

[1] http://www.dodgycoder.net/2012/02/coding-tricks-of-game-deve...