Yup. This. My 2011 mbp got handed down, and i've got a 2015 mbp now. I miss the ethernet, but its overall been a decent unit.
But im not seeing anything from apple i'd buy as a replacement. Its just useless garbage.
Perhaps ironically, the surface laptop from microsoft is looking pretty good these days; and a number of my peers are getting those now.
I've also had a couple standing offers on my 2015 mbp whenever i let it go; not because these people can't afford a new one, but because they don't want apple's latest nonsense but still want a newer apple than what they have now.
Now, with hyper-v, docker, and microsoft's linux subsystem for windows all becoming very usable, windows10 for all its flaws is just as easy, to run *nix stuff and connect to *nix stuff eroding one of apples big draws for me, and with apple talking about rolling out their own CPU... they're actively running away from where I'm interested in going.
"So now we're limiting the issue to being "in the background"?"
No. That was just an example.
"I asked the question of how you deal with someone who has posted a picture that includes you to their blog."
One picture by one person on one host really doesn't bother me.And if it did, I'd ask them to take it down. What is the 'problem' that needs solving? Why is it a problem?
"And your friend is very likely to have included your name to identify his friends in that picture."
No, *my* friends aren't fuckwits. But as this isn't just about me: yes, a lot of people are tagged in friends images. I'm happy to concede that it happens all the time.
So what should people do when it happens if its not wanted? I assume they would tell their friend to take it down. But a couple random pictures of me online in the background (or even the foreground!!) even if my name is mentioned in the adjacent text -- that simply isn't a dystopian nightmare.
Its not a problem that needs a lot of attention.
"If you have no answer, say that"
Its not that I have no answer, its that my answer is that no societal level response is needed. Deal with it personally, or civilly if you find it egregious enough.
But its only at scale where you have organizations correlating and tagging that metadata at scale that it rises to the level of being a problem that society and government should be involved directly to curtail it; because at scale it IS a dystopian nightmare.
"What would you suggest for anytime someone posts a picture containing you in any online way?"
Scale always matters.
Don't pretend facebook or google are the same thing as being in the background on some rando's self hosted blog.
If some random picture from 3 years ago has me in the background of some Japanese tourists blog on xyz.com; and another random photo containing me from a month ago is on some Brazilian journalists news feed hosted by uvw.com... that's not even slightly a problem
But when a multiple billion people are all taking photos and putting them on the same host, and that host is combing them for meta data to track all the people in all the photos... then suddenly we have a bona fide surveillance network. And its not even limited to the photos that were published... simply uploading them to decide which to publish.
The operator of that network should be subject to a LOT more scrutiny than some rando with a blog.
" Actually distribute the wealth to the other 90%."
He's given 50 billion away. Assuming you mean other American's, would a $150 cheque really change your life? Or maybe he should be thinking globally, where would you like your cheque for $7 sent ?
"Or even just write a giant check to the treasury."
Woohoo, the US will only slip $935 billion further into debt this year instead of $985 billion.
(The oh-so-terrible waste of space by a smartphone charger shown in TFA could have been solved by moving the charger one outlet to the right. The horror.)
Sure that would work, unless you have 2 devices and they both "spread" right.
Firstly, this would make smartphone chargers unneccessarily big. Those things fit in a pocket and it's good that way.
People believe this despite obvious questions like "why would you have something like that on a commercial airplane?" and "where is the body?"
The parachute was not on the plane. It was one his demands to release hostages.
So its entirely plausible that he'd be given a dummy parachute.
However, he requested multiple parachutes as part of his hijacking demands. So the idea that the police would have deliberately given him a dummy parachute is pretty much unthinkable, because asking for multiple parachutes was precisely to raise the possibility of him having a hostage from the plane jump with him... as insurance against the parachutes being sabotaged.
Further if he'd been deliberately given a dummy parachute, I expect that would have come out by now.
So you are right, but not for the reason you gave.
"It was NEVER a 'huge waste of your space and time',"
Tell that to the boxes of CDs in my basement that I haven't touched since i ripped them years ago.
"it was an investment in something that you'd enjoy for years to come "
Lol... I just shake my head at a lot of the titles i have on CD. I mean sure, there's lots of classics... but there's bunches of truly forgettable garbage too.
"without needing an internet connection, without having to pay, pay, pay every month forever. "
You probably haven't listened to Tiffany in 25+ years. And your kids don't want to inherit your Tiffany CD either.
I can't bring myself to subscribe to a streaming service, but I don't really buy CDs anymore either. I'll pirate or purchase the odd single or digital album though.
I'm not sure if removing the plaintext listener solves the issue, since the MITM operator has prevented you from reaching it anyway.
I wonder if this is something that can be dealt with by an extension to SPF. Where if you advertise STARTTLS then servers can check that, and refuse to deliver to your MX host if STARTTLS is not actually available when they try to connect.
Of course that requires that the DNS also be signed/secure.:) But with that in place MITM would be a lot harder.
All that seems to be taken in context of 'if you use pocket' this information recorded as part of that transaction. It's also not clear if that is 'extra telemetry'; or whether it's the same telemetry as firefox itself -- which you can turn off if you want.
Nevertheless, I agree it should have remained a simple removable extension to remove all confusion and doubt. I have always been in strong agreement with that.
I find it *really* hard to believe it's anonymous, as on mobile devices it captures your advertising ID on iOS and Android.
I agree. I'd like more information about that from them. Why, and what for; how do they justify that.
I don't value pockets functionality so i remove the icon. And I thought it was idiotic that it was integrated instead of left as a 3rd party extension.. but...
As far as I can tell, Pocket operates locally; while the pocket extension functionality in the browser does track you *locally*, its about as evil as the firefox "history" list, which is to say: not even slightly evil.
Neither Mozilla nor Pocket receives a copy of your browser history. The entire process of sorting and filtering which stories you should see happens locally in your copy of Firefox.
Near as I can tell, the list of all pocket recommends is sent to you. Your local browser then filters and sorts the list by comparing it to that. Your history and preferences aren't sent to pocket in this process.
Read how it works for yourself. What part specifically do you object to? What am I missing?
"Ok - so here's the thing. Developers should have a firm understanding of OS maintenance, firewalls, networking, security, and all that good stuff. Operators should know how to code. I wouldn't personally hire a developer whose workstation was a disaster area, and I wouldn't hire an prod-level operator who didn't know, at least in passing, a few languages."
Well said.
"But this whole "devops" thing is kind of a joke when you get to the enterprise level. The goals of developers and operators are simply different, and the stakes are way too high to encourage those who write the code to also run the code."
I think at the enterprise level, 'devops' really becomes it's own thing that sits between the dedicated developers and dedicated ops teams and bridges them; automating and managing the movement of code from one to the other.
Quick Mexico! Flood the borders. If you can tilt the scales so that you have the majority, this asshat has just agreed to deport himself and his kind and confine himself to Britain or Holland or whatever.
I mean, that's assuming he's american, and white, and a he... but who is going to be against that here?
USB-C is in its USB1.1 phase of life -- its still pretty flaky, and the garbage cables and poor implementations and so on plagued early USB too.
Short term USB-C is already useful despite the issues, and long term it will be fantastic.
My only real grievance is that some vendors like Apple went all in. A USB-C port or 2 on a new laptop is quite desirable. ONLY USB-C ports on a new laptop OTOH is idiotic.
"Originaly, the creators of IPv6 (and the IETF) did not want _anything_ to do with NAT."
Yes and?
"Only because of pressure from users and vendors did they _finally_ gave in and defined NAT for IPv6"
So ipv6 does NAT. Which is what I said.
"Fact check first, say comments are ignorant latter."
What was there to fact check? The comment was ignorant. Ipv6 does nat. And not only is it there, but its there precisely because of heavy pressure from users and vendors. That's a good sign that its not just going to be there, but that it will actually get used.
"And it's going to be slow and shitty because it's USB 1... so what's even the point of that?"
I have lots of stuff from 2000 that still work fine... barcode scanners, label printers, lego mindstorms, its nice its not a hassle to use them... well it is with USB-C only devices, but most laptops from sensible vendors still have USB-A ports.
" Why do we bother with dynamic IPs, DHCP leases and all that stuff? Because IPs were/are a limited resource and when we were on dial-up reserving an IP for every customer was excessive."
You aren't entirely wrong. But the bigger reason for dynamic IP and DHCP was simply convenience. Grandma didn't need to know her IP address to use the AOL CD.
IT people could centrally manage desktop and laptop IP allocations for subnets and etc without having to program it into each PC.
When laptops came along, DHCP allows you move around and connect to different networks with a minimum of hassle.
It wasn't really primarily about ip address space limitations; although, yes, that certainly was a factor, especially in the later years.
"With IPv6 it'd be totally possible to move to a static default, you are path::to::ISP::customerNumber::MAC and it's yours forever and everything you do is linked by default"
Yes, it would be *possible* to do this. But that's really not much of step beyond what they can already do for most cable, dsl, and fibre users, where the addresses are 'dynamic' but often remain stable for years and only get changed when services / infrastructure are changed.
And with ip v6, it would still be trivial to use VPN proxies, use random macs, and connect from public wifi APs.
ISPs *may* also go the other way; and flip the script, and NAT your ipv6 address by default. Then they can sell targeted advertising. If they gave you a global static public ip address by default -- like you said that's great advertising id... why would they give that away when they could sell it??:)
Also, static is usually an upcharge today -- not just because of limited ip address space. (consider that whether you are on dynamic or static; and you are using cable/DSL/fibre you still need an ip address dedicated to you pretty much 24x7 so the demand on the ip pool is the same) but they charge extra for static because you need it to more easily run servers etc; and that won't change with ipv6. So again, static-by-default is giving up a revenue stream -- because some customers will need static and will pay extra for it.
Finally, even if the ISP went static by default, all you have to do is hire an ipv6 VPN service, and you are back to the same level of privacy you have now. To the outside world you originate at the VPN, and anyone who wants to know who you are will need to subpoena the VPN provider for logs. Obviously that won't work in a regime that both requires static ip and bans the use of VPNs... but if you live under such a regime you have a political problem not a technical one.
That's pretty ignorant. Because NAT creates very nearly as many problems as it solves.
And if users don't want a device traceable or directly reachable by ipv6 address you can still do NAT with ipv6 too if you want; you just don't HAVE to.
"But you have no clue how real vertical hacks work,"
I haven't spent any time with Zandronum; and I'm not aware of any trick that lets you teleport without that being obvious on the automap. Not to mention the question of how it avoids being disruptive to combat.
Can you explain how that trick is done or link to an explanation? And is it supported in classic doom or does it require a newer engine to work? I spent a LOT of time with Doom, albeit years ago now, and I'm open to being wrong here... but what you are describing doesn't add up to anything I (think) I know about classic doom.
"How the fuck do you think I figured out how it's being done?"
Given that true room stacking isn't being done in Doom, I'm going to go with... 'you haven't figured it out'.:)
"I'll give you a protip - teleports."
Lol, really, that's an even more obvious trick, since you can trivially see that you are teleporting simply by watching the map. Teleports aren't generally as good as clever platform trickery because there are few tells when you teleport.
If you knew if it was teleports, why were you arguing that it allowed room stacking?
" (because it still needs all that data and info from the actual DOOM/II WAD file to work otherwise it would work standalone with many other WAD files,)"
Not relevant. You can make a true 3D engine that uses doom wads. The original doom engine was 2.5D; the wad files describe the level, the wad files adhere to the limitations of the original 2.5D engine to work with the original executables, but there is no technical reason that would ever stop you from rendering the wads with a true 3D engine, and lots of doom ports are exactly that, including this one.
" (Alien Vendetta is one such WAD, which did hall over hall in pyramids, with crossover sections) on just the plain DOOM engine."
No they didn't. I promise. It couldn't do it. If it runs on the original doom engine there is no hall over hall. The level designers did their level best to make it look like it did, with clever level design, with platforms that raised and lowered when you couldn't see them operated by silent triggers, but it didn't ever actually have a single x,y coordinate anywhere on the map where if you put two players on it, that they could be in different places.
For example, if it had a two tunnels cross at different levels... like a + for example but the tunnels didn't actually meet, then where the east-west tunnel crossed over the north-south tunnel, the junction was really just defined with a floor and ceiling that platform that moved up and down when you couldn't see it. Take a look at the WAD in an editor, or play around with no-clipping in the original game and take a look, or play it multiplayer, and try to cross the junction at the same time; one of you will find it blocked, or one of you will be in the junction, and the other will trigger the elevator and either get to ride it up/down, or perhaps get crushed out of it before it moves. (some levels mods did a crush as part of the platform movement to clear monsters and corpses off the platform to further try and hide that it was a moving platform.
That's pretty strange. I'd say descent was defined by true 3D rendered environments with collision and polygon fills and 6 degrees of freedom for motion.
There were a few 3d mesh games prior with 6 degrees -- echelon comes to mind.
As for your definitions, sort of: 2D -- you move around in an {x,y} maze, you, your enemies, and everything else all had a fixed Z axis.
Wolfenstein was a good example.
2.5D -- can mean a lot of things, but I think for most people the *defining* characteristic was that you could move in the Z axis; but the world itself wasn't truly 3D. Gravity certainly isn't required, and you could even have a 6 d-o-f camera and 6 d-o-f movment in a 2.5D game.
The key to a 2.5D game is that at any given x,y coordinate on the playing field, there is one z value for the floor, and one z value for the ceiling, and an open interval between them, and the gameplay at that x,y coordinate takes place in that vertical interval.
3D takes that restriction away. At a given x,y coordinate, there might be more than one floor and ceiling interval.
The upshot is that in a 2.5D game, "rooms" cannot be stacked, for example you will never see a balcony that you can either stand on or under at the same x,y coordinate. One tunnel can never pass under another one, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup. This. My 2011 mbp got handed down, and i've got a 2015 mbp now. I miss the ethernet, but its overall been a decent unit.
But im not seeing anything from apple i'd buy as a replacement. Its just useless garbage.
Perhaps ironically, the surface laptop from microsoft is looking pretty good these days; and a number of my peers are getting those now.
I've also had a couple standing offers on my 2015 mbp whenever i let it go; not because these people can't afford a new one, but because they don't want apple's latest nonsense but still want a newer apple than what they have now.
Now, with hyper-v, docker, and microsoft's linux subsystem for windows all becoming very usable, windows10 for all its flaws is just as easy, to run *nix stuff and connect to *nix stuff eroding one of apples big draws for me, and with apple talking about rolling out their own CPU... they're actively running away from where I'm interested in going.
"So now we're limiting the issue to being "in the background"?"
No. That was just an example.
"I asked the question of how you deal with someone who has posted a picture that includes you to their blog."
One picture by one person on one host really doesn't bother me.And if it did, I'd ask them to take it down. What is the 'problem' that needs solving? Why is it a problem?
"And your friend is very likely to have included your name to identify his friends in that picture."
No, *my* friends aren't fuckwits. But as this isn't just about me: yes, a lot of people are tagged in friends images. I'm happy to concede that it happens all the time.
So what should people do when it happens if its not wanted? I assume they would tell their friend to take it down. But a couple random pictures of me online in the background (or even the foreground!!) even if my name is mentioned in the adjacent text -- that simply isn't a dystopian nightmare.
Its not a problem that needs a lot of attention.
"If you have no answer, say that"
Its not that I have no answer, its that my answer is that no societal level response is needed. Deal with it personally, or civilly if you find it egregious enough.
But its only at scale where you have organizations correlating and tagging that metadata at scale that it rises to the level of being a problem that society and government should be involved directly to curtail it; because at scale it IS a dystopian nightmare.
"What would you suggest for anytime someone posts a picture containing you in any online way?"
Scale always matters.
Don't pretend facebook or google are the same thing as being in the background on some rando's self hosted blog.
If some random picture from 3 years ago has me in the background of some Japanese tourists blog on xyz.com; and another random photo containing me from a month ago is on some Brazilian journalists news feed hosted by uvw.com... that's not even slightly a problem
But when a multiple billion people are all taking photos and putting them on the same host, and that host is combing them for meta data to track all the people in all the photos... then suddenly we have a bona fide surveillance network. And its not even limited to the photos that were published... simply uploading them to decide which to publish.
The operator of that network should be subject to a LOT more scrutiny than some rando with a blog.
I'd argue rich people don't need dual SIM because paying the high roaming fees isn't a concern; and likely isn't even a cost borne by them anyway.
Trying to minimize one's phone bill by juggling sims in a multi-SIM phone is what people who aren't rich do.
" Actually distribute the wealth to the other 90%."
He's given 50 billion away. Assuming you mean other American's, would a $150 cheque really change your life? Or maybe he should be thinking globally, where would you like your cheque for $7 sent ?
"Or even just write a giant check to the treasury."
Woohoo, the US will only slip $935 billion further into debt this year instead of $985 billion.
(The oh-so-terrible waste of space by a smartphone charger shown in TFA could have been solved by moving the charger one outlet to the right. The horror.)
Sure that would work, unless you have 2 devices and they both "spread" right.
Firstly, this would make smartphone chargers unneccessarily big. Those things fit in a pocket and it's good that way.
Clearly, the Samsung charger is not the only way to do it:
https://www.apple.com/us/shop/...
Of course $19.00 USD for a 50 cent part is a whole other issue.
People believe this despite obvious questions like "why would you have something like that on a commercial airplane?" and "where is the body?"
The parachute was not on the plane. It was one his demands to release hostages.
So its entirely plausible that he'd be given a dummy parachute.
However, he requested multiple parachutes as part of his hijacking demands. So the idea that the police would have deliberately given him a dummy parachute is pretty much unthinkable, because asking for multiple parachutes was precisely to raise the possibility of him having a hostage from the plane jump with him... as insurance against the parachutes being sabotaged.
Further if he'd been deliberately given a dummy parachute, I expect that would have come out by now.
So you are right, but not for the reason you gave.
"It was NEVER a 'huge waste of your space and time',"
Tell that to the boxes of CDs in my basement that I haven't touched since i ripped them years ago.
"it was an investment in something that you'd enjoy for years to come "
Lol... I just shake my head at a lot of the titles i have on CD. I mean sure, there's lots of classics... but there's bunches of truly forgettable garbage too.
"without needing an internet connection, without having to pay, pay, pay every month forever. "
You probably haven't listened to Tiffany in 25+ years. And your kids don't want to inherit your Tiffany CD either.
I can't bring myself to subscribe to a streaming service, but I don't really buy CDs anymore either. I'll pirate or purchase the odd single or digital album though.
I'm not sure if removing the plaintext listener solves the issue, since the MITM operator has prevented you from reaching it anyway.
I wonder if this is something that can be dealt with by an extension to SPF. Where if you advertise STARTTLS then servers can check that, and refuse to deliver to your MX host if STARTTLS is not actually available when they try to connect.
Of course that requires that the DNS also be signed/secure. :) But with that in place MITM would be a lot harder.
All that seems to be taken in context of 'if you use pocket' this information recorded as part of that transaction. It's also not clear if that is 'extra telemetry'; or whether it's the same telemetry as firefox itself -- which you can turn off if you want.
Nevertheless, I agree it should have remained a simple removable extension to remove all confusion and doubt. I have always been in strong agreement with that.
I find it *really* hard to believe it's anonymous, as on mobile devices it captures your advertising ID on iOS and Android.
I agree. I'd like more information about that from them. Why, and what for; how do they justify that.
I didn't find it. Where is this policy page? Where does it say they track usage patterns of pocket?
I don't value pockets functionality so i remove the icon. And I thought it was idiotic that it was integrated instead of left as a 3rd party extension.. but...
As far as I can tell, Pocket operates locally; while the pocket extension functionality in the browser does track you *locally*, its about as evil as the firefox "history" list, which is to say: not even slightly evil.
Neither Mozilla nor Pocket receives a copy of your browser history. The entire process of sorting and filtering which stories you should see happens locally in your copy of Firefox.
https://help.getpocket.com/art...
Near as I can tell, the list of all pocket recommends is sent to you. Your local browser then filters and sorts the list by comparing it to that. Your history and preferences aren't sent to pocket in this process.
Read how it works for yourself. What part specifically do you object to? What am I missing?
"A feature available on a Mac for years!"
But which only works if you have an apple phone and an apple computer. Thanks Apple. Thanks for nothing.
Glad to see google doing this. Because im not going to get an iphone and switch to a crappy mac desktop just for SMS.
"Ok - so here's the thing. Developers should have a firm understanding of OS maintenance, firewalls, networking, security, and all that good stuff. Operators should know how to code. I wouldn't personally hire a developer whose workstation was a disaster area, and I wouldn't hire an prod-level operator who didn't know, at least in passing, a few languages."
Well said.
"But this whole "devops" thing is kind of a joke when you get to the enterprise level. The goals of developers and operators are simply different, and the stakes are way too high to encourage those who write the code to also run the code."
I think at the enterprise level, 'devops' really becomes it's own thing that sits between the dedicated developers and dedicated ops teams and bridges them; automating and managing the movement of code from one to the other.
"Remove all minorities back to their origin"
Quick Mexico! Flood the borders. If you can tilt the scales so that you have the majority, this asshat has just agreed to deport himself and his kind and confine himself to Britain or Holland or whatever.
I mean, that's assuming he's american, and white, and a he... but who is going to be against that here?
I tend to generally agree.
USB-C is in its USB1.1 phase of life -- its still pretty flaky, and the garbage cables and poor implementations and so on plagued early USB too.
Short term USB-C is already useful despite the issues, and long term it will be fantastic.
My only real grievance is that some vendors like Apple went all in. A USB-C port or 2 on a new laptop is quite desirable. ONLY USB-C ports on a new laptop OTOH is idiotic.
"Originaly, the creators of IPv6 (and the IETF) did not want _anything_ to do with NAT."
Yes and?
"Only because of pressure from users and vendors did they _finally_ gave in and defined NAT for IPv6"
So ipv6 does NAT. Which is what I said.
"Fact check first, say comments are ignorant latter."
What was there to fact check? The comment was ignorant. Ipv6 does nat. And not only is it there, but its there precisely because of heavy pressure from users and vendors. That's a good sign that its not just going to be there, but that it will actually get used.
"And it's going to be slow and shitty because it's USB 1... so what's even the point of that?"
I have lots of stuff from 2000 that still work fine... barcode scanners, label printers, lego mindstorms, its nice its not a hassle to use them... well it is with USB-C only devices, but most laptops from sensible vendors still have USB-A ports.
" Why do we bother with dynamic IPs, DHCP leases and all that stuff? Because IPs were/are a limited resource and when we were on dial-up reserving an IP for every customer was excessive."
You aren't entirely wrong. But the bigger reason for dynamic IP and DHCP was simply convenience. Grandma didn't need to know her IP address to use the AOL CD.
IT people could centrally manage desktop and laptop IP allocations for subnets and etc without having to program it into each PC.
When laptops came along, DHCP allows you move around and connect to different networks with a minimum of hassle.
It wasn't really primarily about ip address space limitations; although, yes, that certainly was a factor, especially in the later years.
"With IPv6 it'd be totally possible to move to a static default, you are path::to::ISP::customerNumber::MAC and it's yours forever and everything you do is linked by default"
Yes, it would be *possible* to do this. But that's really not much of step beyond what they can already do for most cable, dsl, and fibre users, where the addresses are 'dynamic' but often remain stable for years and only get changed when services / infrastructure are changed.
And with ip v6, it would still be trivial to use VPN proxies, use random macs, and connect from public wifi APs.
ISPs *may* also go the other way; and flip the script, and NAT your ipv6 address by default. Then they can sell targeted advertising. If they gave you a global static public ip address by default -- like you said that's great advertising id... why would they give that away when they could sell it?? :)
Also, static is usually an upcharge today -- not just because of limited ip address space. (consider that whether you are on dynamic or static; and you are using cable/DSL/fibre you still need an ip address dedicated to you pretty much 24x7 so the demand on the ip pool is the same) but they charge extra for static because you need it to more easily run servers etc; and that won't change with ipv6. So again, static-by-default is giving up a revenue stream -- because some customers will need static and will pay extra for it.
Finally, even if the ISP went static by default, all you have to do is hire an ipv6 VPN service, and you are back to the same level of privacy you have now. To the outside world you originate at the VPN, and anyone who wants to know who you are will need to subpoena the VPN provider for logs. Obviously that won't work in a regime that both requires static ip and bans the use of VPNs... but if you live under such a regime you have a political problem not a technical one.
That's pretty ignorant. Because NAT creates very nearly as many problems as it solves.
And if users don't want a device traceable or directly reachable by ipv6 address you can still do NAT with ipv6 too if you want; you just don't HAVE to.
"But you have no clue how real vertical hacks work,"
I haven't spent any time with Zandronum; and I'm not aware of any trick that lets you teleport without that being obvious on the automap. Not to mention the question of how it avoids being disruptive to combat.
Can you explain how that trick is done or link to an explanation? And is it supported in classic doom or does it require a newer engine to work? I spent a LOT of time with Doom, albeit years ago now, and I'm open to being wrong here... but what you are describing doesn't add up to anything I (think) I know about classic doom.
"How the fuck do you think I figured out how it's being done?"
Given that true room stacking isn't being done in Doom, I'm going to go with... 'you haven't figured it out'. :)
"I'll give you a protip - teleports."
Lol, really, that's an even more obvious trick, since you can trivially see that you are teleporting simply by watching the map. Teleports aren't generally as good as clever platform trickery because there are few tells when you teleport.
If you knew if it was teleports, why were you arguing that it allowed room stacking?
You are simply mistaken.
" (because it still needs all that data and info from the actual DOOM/II WAD file to work otherwise it would work standalone with many other WAD files,)"
Not relevant. You can make a true 3D engine that uses doom wads. The original doom engine was 2.5D; the wad files describe the level, the wad files adhere to the limitations of the original 2.5D engine to work with the original executables, but there is no technical reason that would ever stop you from rendering the wads with a true 3D engine, and lots of doom ports are exactly that, including this one.
" (Alien Vendetta is one such WAD, which did hall over hall in pyramids, with crossover sections) on just the plain DOOM engine."
No they didn't. I promise. It couldn't do it. If it runs on the original doom engine there is no hall over hall. The level designers did their level best to make it look like it did, with clever level design, with platforms that raised and lowered when you couldn't see them operated by silent triggers, but it didn't ever actually have a single x,y coordinate anywhere on the map where if you put two players on it, that they could be in different places.
For example, if it had a two tunnels cross at different levels... like a + for example but the tunnels didn't actually meet, then where the east-west tunnel crossed over the north-south tunnel, the junction was really just defined with a floor and ceiling that platform that moved up and down when you couldn't see it. Take a look at the WAD in an editor, or play around with no-clipping in the original game and take a look, or play it multiplayer, and try to cross the junction at the same time; one of you will find it blocked, or one of you will be in the junction, and the other will trigger the elevator and either get to ride it up/down, or perhaps get crushed out of it before it moves. (some levels mods did a crush as part of the platform movement to clear monsters and corpses off the platform to further try and hide that it was a moving platform.
Where I'd argue that removing that restriction means that's its now a proper 3D shooter now.
That's pretty strange.
I'd say descent was defined by true 3D rendered environments with collision and polygon fills and 6 degrees of freedom for motion.
There were a few 3d mesh games prior with 6 degrees -- echelon comes to mind.
As for your definitions, sort of:
2D -- you move around in an {x,y} maze, you, your enemies, and everything else all had a fixed Z axis.
Wolfenstein was a good example.
2.5D -- can mean a lot of things, but I think for most people the *defining* characteristic was that you could move in the Z axis; but the world itself wasn't truly 3D. Gravity certainly isn't required, and you could even have a 6 d-o-f camera and 6 d-o-f movment in a 2.5D game.
The key to a 2.5D game is that at any given x,y coordinate on the playing field, there is one z value for the floor, and one z value for the ceiling, and an open interval between them, and the gameplay at that x,y coordinate takes place in that vertical interval.
3D takes that restriction away. At a given x,y coordinate, there might be more than one floor and ceiling interval.
The upshot is that in a 2.5D game, "rooms" cannot be stacked, for example you will never see a balcony that you can either stand on or under at the same x,y coordinate. One tunnel can never pass under another one, etc.