Responding to doubts about these ACARS messages:
In post #652, Water Pilot said "In my career I saw lots of messed up computer transmissions, but these messages have a logical coherence. I'm not saying it is not possible that the messages are bogus, but there are a whole lot of ACARS messages possible for the computer to pick randomly from."
In my 45 year career as a software engineer, I know that you need to keep some doubt in mind about the cause of a message until you have fixed the problem and successfully tested it. And, although I have worked with SCADA systems before, I don't have specific knowledge about the ACARS system.
That being said, these ACARS messages reflect substantial functionality of the system. They are properly formed and properly time-stamped and followed the communication protocols well-enough to be received. Also, with that level of functionality, most safety related systems are designed to report problems with the system itself - and there are no reports that the ACARS system detected any such problems.
If I were looking at these messages for the purpose of diagnosing a problem with the damaged aircraft systems, my initial expectation would be that the source of these reports were, in fact, from the sensors denoted in the reports.
I don't want to get involved in how confident we can be about these ACARS reports because that can only be done in the context of how you want to use the information. But I certainly find it reasonable to have a discussion that presume their validity - so long as we keep some doubt in mind.
I would also defend "impatience" for other data. Althoug we all have high hopes for the recovery of the recorders, we do not what additional data will actually become available.