The point the GP is making is that reporters outside of NASA blew this up, not NASA themselves. That's not semantics, that's just really bad reporting.

As far as I've seen, NASA didn't make this out to be more than it was. In fact, I saw a couple of NASA releases stating that people shouldn't get too excited about it.

True, but that's the problem and the lie of omission.

If he had just said yes, then there could have been followup asking for full disclosure. But, since he said yes and then gave a followup immediately it would be natural for anyone to think that his followup was complete. Thus, he's guilty of omitting pertinent details that may have affected his standing.

Here's an example (only hypothetical):
Question: "Have you ever been arrested in Texas?"
My Answer: "Yes, I was detained for disorderly conduct but was acquitted"
Result: Most of the people hearing that would think that was all and go about their business.
The real story: The above is true, but I was also arrested for several other possibly relevant crimes.
What happens when they find out: a shit storm

Sure, the people doing the questioning failed to be exactly precise, but that doesn't mean I wasn't hiding something.

In two-party consent states it IS illegal, regardless of the location. Even in a lot of one-party states, the person doing the recording must be taking part in the conversation, or else that too is illegal.

No it's not. Definitely you should take some simple notes if you need them, but that's very different from developing questions about the material while it's being presented. Taking notes doesn't require understanding, and therefore requires almost no thought. Thinking of a question, however does take significant thought because it goes well beyond simply repeating the same material in a different format. This is especially true as the subject mater gets more complex. That's one reason why it's so much better to wait for questions until after the presentation.

Think about the process involved in both activities. In taking notes, auditory processing occurs as you hear the material and is quickly sent to the hand for writing. It's a simple, rote process that requires no real thought or effort. Developing a question, however, is much more complicated. You have to hear the material, process it for an appropriate level of understanding, discover an area for further investigation, formulate that into a coherent fragment, and speak it. The second process requires activation of a lot more of your cognitive centers than the first (especially since the first activity has been so thoroughly burned in).

In either case, the point is that you devote your full attention to the presenter so that you don't miss something. If you're thinking of a question, you're attention is on the question and not the presenter.

He's saying that when you "come up with questions automatically", that detracts from your cognitive listening skills because at least part of your thought is directed to the question and not what's being said. I have to agree with him. No matter how good you think you are, when you start thinking of questions while listening to something you take away some attention that could have otherwise been spent on listening and understanding.

Most people who've taught or given presentations would attest that people who think they can talk (or think of questions) and listen at the same time are deluding themselves.

In short, Yes. In long, Yes absolutely.

They don't need to be sociopaths, just don't underestimate things like the bystander effect and the human capability to ignore something unpleasant. Turning off communications with the cabin would help, and I'm wondering if items like that were formalized once they started locking the doors and treating the cockpit like a secured zone.

The human mind is wired to rationalize inaction and ignore reality, especially when there's any small amount of "push" being applied in that direction. Look at all the experiments we've seen that involve getting people to do or ignore horrible things with minimal effort. The Milgram experiment, for example. I'd be willing to bet that a pilot would ignore anything coming from the cabin if she or he was being told to ignore it by controllers.

In this context, the fittest do survive but the world may not define "fittest" the same way you do.

In that example, the soccer mom may survive and continue her genetic line not because her driving habits make her "fit", but other factors may. Maybe she can afford a minivan with excellent safety features, and because of those she survives. Or maybe someone else buys those features for her. Selection pressures in those cases would include her ability to earn pay, or her ability to socialize.

We have to be aware, in our current situation, that we are quite literally changing the priority and types of selection pressures. They aren't always what we've understood to be classical pressures, but they are always there. People will always be subjected to them in some form or fashion because we don't live in a bubble, instead we live in a world with finite resources where selection is a much more subtle and complex thing than it was 10,000 years ago.

Answer: Probably not enough to do serious damage, but definitely more than enough to make most intelligent people need antidepressants.

If only we should be so lucky.

That's arguable. Despite what some people think, there is the concept of a lost sale involved. I don't believe RIAA claims (which are no doubt very inflated), but when a song is copied many many times, there will be some percentage of people who copied that music who would have bought it otherwise. That might be a very low percentage, but it is assuredly non-zero. Also, there is the cost of lost control. Copyright law entitles the rights holder of an artistic pattern to the control of that pattern. Because they created it, they get the say in what happens to it. Just because the creation is digital now, does not automatically negate that. In a nutshell, copying a file may be easy and it may seem ok, but it's still illegal unless you have permission to do that. That's the cost for not having created it yourself or having secured the rights to it for yourself.

The adjustment here is part of the argument in question. Just because the pattern being copied is easily manipulated, does not automatically mean it is morally acceptable to copy it. Copying it may be easy, but the fact remains that in so doing, you're using a template to create a new file. The template wasn't free to create, and the current system recognizes that by stating that the pattern itself has some value and that the pattern has an assigned ownership (which isn't you in this case). It therefore remains the property of the copyright holder. In effect, whoever went to the trouble of creating the pattern owns it, and they should be compensated for it.

The argument that the internet has changed the morality of these things is infantile. The difficulty of an act does not determine whether it is right or wrong. For example, killing someone with a bat would take considerable effort, and would be wrong. However pushing that same person off a bridge to their death is much easier, would cost almost no effort, and yet is still wrong. I'm not comparing murder to the unlawful copying of music, just illustrating that an eased effort of an act does not erase the morality of that act.

It's besides the point, but copying data is creation. You're just using an existing template to guide the final form of the new creation. Also, it's a deflection to say that copying data is the value at question. It's not, the pattern being copied is the thing being valued, and that pattern does have value.

Kind of, but not really. It takes time to build a house just like it takes time to make art. Just because it costs very little to copy the final product does not automatically mean that there wasn't some investment of time and effort on the front end. Copyright law seeks to recognize that original time and effort.

Most of the pro-copying arguments I've seen involve this logic: "It costs me almost nothing to copy this thing, therefore it has no value and the creating artist deserves nothing for it". I've seen it dressed up a lot of different ways but it usually boils down to that, and it's a logical fallacy. If it were true, then people wouldn't recognize a difference between listening to static, and listening to music.

Whether or not intellectual property has value can be argued all day long, but that's not at issue here. What is at issue is whether or not an implementation of an idea has value. Most people confuse those two things, simply because the music they interact with is so easily manipulated. We must be very careful to recognize the difference between a thought, and something created from that thought. Creation has value, the only question is how much value, and how to recognize it.

The big one is that there's essentially no profit motive. In a well-functioning federal agency, all of the staff are encouraged to "do the right thing" for the people they serve, rather than maximize profit.

You've touched on something that I discuss with my socialist friends on a regular basis. They fail to recognize that there's always a profit motive. In government jobs its not a corporate motive, it's a personal motive. I'd argue that personal profit motives are much worse than corporate profit motives, because corporate motives are typically enabled by groups of people that are effectively hindered by their disagreements. In individual profit motives, there is no such limitation. Also others are not likely to call them out on their behavior due to fears of confrontation, and because they receive little or no incentive to ever raise their voice. Most of the time, they just don't want to be noticed, and calling out someone else is a great way to get the wrong kind of attention.

In a nutshell, an overwhelming number of government employees "do the right thing" for the people they serve, true enough. You just have to remember that they consider themselves as the #1 person they serve.

It would be pretty effective at causing panic and fear in the average user. The user could then give their credit info over the phone, or the agent could tell them the command to re-enable the gui and get them on-line again. It wouldn't have to be perfect and they wouldn't care if the right services were re-enabled, since they'd just charge the card and get off the phone.

Thank you for that! I'm pretty well versed in military jargon, but I've never heard that one before. I appreciate it.