It is the media that has "the pressure to find something, ANYTHING to satisfy" themselves to fill the air time and hopefully get the "scoop". Those looking for the crash site (and I have zero doubt there is one) and the politicians do not benefit from wasting time propagating and dealing with incredible theories.

There is more than one radio on an aircraft. Your transponder should be set to squawk 7600 if your normal voice communications have ceased functioning, i.e. ATC cannot reach you, or you them, through normal channels. Typically if the aircraft is in controlled airspace they would switch to visual flight rules and land at the earliest opportunity (unless VFR is not possible in which case the last approved route is followed to a suitable landing). Attempts to regain communication from the ground may use emergency frequencies, voice features of NAVAIDs, light signals, or commands to change the aircraft state to acknowledge receipt (in case of transmit only failure). This would be a very unlikely event on a commercial jet given the redundancy on board (typically 3 x VHF radio, 2 x HF, 2 x Sat,even the transponders are redundant).

Here is a typical B777 audio control panel and radio control panel. Any pilot can use any radio or listen to audio components of the redundant navigation aid receivers.

I think you mean manually. The devices fitted to commercial airliners (like the Artex B406) do not require manual activation, but they do allow it (and the ability to manually activate is a requirement under TSO C91a). Manual activation is useful for a controlled aircraft in immanent danger of loss, e.g. out of fuel mid-Pacific, because it ensures the signal gets out before the crash could impair the device. G-load triggered activation is useful when the event is, as you say, quick. Automatic activation is not certain though.

Flight data and cockpit voice recorders are only ever recovered when the plane crashes. "Recovering" them before then is called "maintenance."

COSPAS-SARSAT is not useful unless the aircraft ELT is activated (manually or automatically), intact, and and above ground/water. The aircraft ELT is not active/visible and the crew never called mayday, squawked 7500 (hijacked), 7600 (radio failure) or 7700 (emergency). That's why this is quite a mystery.

FlightAware is coalescing a range of data. In the US they can use a time-delayed FAA radar feeds, feeds from ADS-B receivers, possibly other aircraft originated data (ADS-A/C), and fore-knowledge of the expected location based on filed plans and aircraft speed to date. In Australia there's little radar coverage over the interior or outer sea approaches: ground-based ADS systems are useful but there are significant blind spots and ATC relies on aircraft reports over voice (VHF, HF, sometimes satellite) and projections based on filed airspeed etc.

Commercial ships can routinely report a GPS location once an hour and it would be useful if the ship suddenly disappeared. They can do that by satellite or HF radio although I don't know the specific system. Ships rarely disintegrate in too short a time to issue a mayday or deploy an ELT. In any case they will be within, say, 20 nautical miles of its last reported location.

Emergency Locator Transmitters are the aviation device. They use a 406Mhz digital signal uplink to a satellite: the data carries a unique ID registered to the device/aircraft. Most emit a local homing signal on 121 and 243 Mhz that's not useful in a global sense. All have to survive the initial catastrophic event, and subsequent fall to Earth, to be useful. Some are automatically activated/ejected from the the aircraft after severe jolt, some are not. Some are activated by immersion, some are not. All should float if free of other wreckage. None work if submerged (either to receive GPS to get a location, or to transmit it). While certainly useful they are not an infallible system.

Your law forces the exporter of ITAR controlled goods (arms, missile tech, crypto etc.) to impose your export restrictions, handling requirements, and audits etc. on the authorised foreign recipient of the goods in the form of contract clauses and required policy/process. It also requires the State Dept. to authorise any such export in the first place. They can, and do, veto exports of even the most tenuously arms-related items if they feel something evil in their waters, when the wind is blowing from the east etc. Failing to ask for/gain permission, exporting without imposing suitable restrictions, or exporting knowing the restrictions will be ignored carry hefty fines. Nations that the US would typically allow export to usually have equivalent laws/regulations blocking re-export. Some nations, e.g. the UK and Australia, have standing arrangement with the US for some classes of restricted materiel. Even so, you can still come unstuck, e.g. http://learnexportcompliance.b...

BTW: I am not saying that Fedora code falls under the ITAR umbrella.

"The blood is collected without harming the crab." Except, of course, for the (self-reported) 10-30% that TFA says die from the procedure or those females with potentially altered fertility. At least synthesised alternatives are in the (patent-encumbered) mill so the critters can just be left in peace.

D'oh! "...which he could not have done as an unmentionable foreigner."

No I don't know the specifics of his allegiance swap occurred, what channels it went through, or how much money greased the rails. He had been living in the US legally for more than a decade at the time (according to the LA Times), which is generally long enough to qualify for citizenship. I do remember it raised a few eyebrows in the (non-Murdoch) Australian media at the time.

Spoken like a true "Younger people" who, for some reason that escapes me, think they have a life somehow more noteworthy than every other living thing on the planet.

As for the business strategy, maybe you are right, or maybe the "separation" is to give at least the appearance of competition in that space or the non-appearance of an all-seeing eye.

After you remove the massive overlap between these claimed 450 million and FaceBook's claimed 1.3 billion or so accounts, and even wider database of identities, you can map the remaining 37 people ;)

Rupert might have been born in Australia, but he's been a naturalized United States citizen since 1985. That allowed him to buy TV stations in the US, which he could have done as an unmentionable foreigner. His involvement in Australia is to present the "right" news through News Limited media properties.

Beware generalising by assuming your behaviour is that of everyone. It isn't.

New Zealand is far more densely populated (16.8 per sq. km) than Australia (3 per sq. km). That said, we would only have to ship a couple of hundred "criminals" from the Federal and Queensland State parliaments. There is a supply of lifeboats we could use to transport them (they will understand not getting first class flights due the financial "crisis" we find ourselves in), and we could adapt some of their recent "law" to outlaw their organisations, any gathering of three or more members or associates of members, and accuse anybody willing to defend them as "part of the criminal gang machine." While I don't think they will greatly affect the numbers I think it a crime against humanity to do this to our trans-Tasman brothers.

You, however, probably need the income of a 50 year old dentist to afford the fuel bill for a zippy 'little' P51 (about 4.5 nmi/US gallon) runabout. (The C152 runs about 13 nmi/USG)