The Air Force's classified test range at Groom Lake, Nev., has never lacked for evocative nicknames—it and its restricted airspace have been called Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, The Box and, most famously, Area 51. Now there's a less romantic moniker to throw on the pile: “Homey Airport,” according to a few civilian aviation journals.
Via spin the cat [1], “Area 51 designated with a new name [2]”
Interesting.
Many many moons ago, in an efford to learn a bit more about DNS (Domain Name Service), I decided to see just how difficult it would be to set up my own private TLD (Top Level Domain) and maybe even delegate a few zones to my then roommate Rob.
The TLD?
.area51
My half of the home network became groomlake.area51 while Rob's side became hangar18.area51. When I got the wireless access point, that portion of the network fell under dreamland.area51 (and by the way—it was pretty easy to set up my own TLD).
And the gateway to the .area51 TLD became a very obvious janet [3] (which is still my firewall/NAT (Network Address Translation) system to this day).
(Why yes, I do have a fascination with Area 51 [4]—why do you ask?)
In other Area 51 trivia, there's a Newton Easter Egg concerning Area 51 [5] (which the government protested and made Apple remove—“Area 51 does not exist!”) and Google Maps [6] has some very high resolution satelite images [7] of the area in question (“I keep telling you civilians, the area does not exist!”).
There are even rumors that t he government has moved Area 51 to a new location [8] and—
Oh wait … someone's at the door. Be right ba—
[1] http://spinthecat.blogspot.com/2008/01/area-51-given-new-
[2] http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/01/airforce_area51_newname_08012
[3] http://www.ufomind.com/area51/org/janet/
[5] http://oof.org/newton/2page.html#aliens
[7] http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&da
[8] http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1281151.html