By that logic Neptune and Uranus are not visible to the naked eye, so they would not be planets either. And Mercury is never in the night sky. And Earth is never seen in the night sky. Your logic would be more damaging to the count of planets than even Tyson arbitrarily deciding that he didn't want to count Pluto as a planet and so removing it from Hayden displays.

Don't forget, they also redefined the term Astronomer when they started letting Tyson call himself an Astronomer. The man is a shameless self-promoter and a director of a planetarium, not an observatory. A planetarium where they do laser light shows for stoners to Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd music. Unlike some true astronomers who actually discovered a planet, Tyson's planet discovery count is negative one. That's why I prefer to call him a "dwarf astronomer".

Bullshit. They remove the bad reviews. Don't take my word for it, read what others say on Reseller Ratings.

I made the error of buying a few items through Alibaba. Everything is either misrepresented, falsely speced, defective or counterfeit. While Alibaba maintains the pretext of settling disputes with the thieves, they always side with the thieves, so much so that the thieves don't even bother to dispute customers claims, they know that Alibaba always sides with them anyway. Avoid buying anything through Alibaba or buy one share of stock, if you can manage to go to the shareholder meeting and try to hold people accountable.

Don't waste time speculating on a motive. It doesn't prove anything and does not find the plane.

Don't waste time speculating on who. It is on;y speculation and does not find the plane.

Focus on determining where the plane went, where it is and how it is being hidden. That will lead to the other answers.

The plane was stolen. Forget about failures that there are no reason to think happened, about explosions or mechanical failures, about suicides or searching the ocean for debris. Just figure out where a stolen 777 was taken and you'll find the plane.

"It starts transmitting when something goes wrong"

In theory it might start transmitting when something goes wrong, but clearly things can "go wrong" that would also prevent the start of the transmission. For example, if a couple of hijackers steal a plane and fly it to Thailand, they will turn off the device around the same time that they turn off the transponder. And just diverting the plane to a different location isn't likely to be detected as "something going wrong" to start the data transmission anyway.

Either your math is off (way off) or your standards are too low. 30 years ago it had already gone to hell. Selling defective crap at inflated prices. Selling improperly spec'ed replacement transistors and similar parts. Sure, I'll grant you that they have managed to raise their prices faster than the rate of inflation since then, even when most other electronics prices are dropping, but it had already become a place to avoid 30 or even 35 years ago for anyone with a clue.

When you charge more for one button cell battery than mail order places charge for 50. including shipping costs, you don't need a lot of customers. Just a trickle of people coming in and thinking they need something or being open to being convinced they need it from the stores "experts" and who have no idea of what the fair price should be. But at least we are starting to see that business plan break down. 1100 is a good start.

As to your 20 questions complaint, they always swear that they never sell or share your info. But decades ago I started giving RS my mailing info with a middle initial of R in my name. My middle name doesn't start with an R, it was just a flag to see where my junk mail was coming from. Sure enough, within a year, I was getting junk mail from "Bell & Howell Schools" (remember them?) wanting to sell me an education in electronics, with that R prominently placed between my first and last name.

No, you're wrong. I saw a Raspberry Pi kit in a Radio Shack just last month. But at a price well over $100, it was just an insult to anyone who knows what they should sell for.

The company has for decades destroyed their reputation. If there were a RS store and an independent next to it selling similar things, I would gladly pay a bit more at the other store for similar items just to avoid buying it as RS. Not that I would have a high expectation that I would be getting something better at the other store, but at least I wouldn't be expecting things to be defective because I bought them at RS.

Decent science and electronics kits and related items are getting rarer and rarer. Even the people who say that they "built" their own computers now actually are only appliance users who just stuck together a dozen or so pre-assembled parts and never touched a soldering iron, likely don't even own one. A real brick-and-mortar store that catered to true hobbyists would be hard pressed to survive anywhere except extremely densely populated areas with above average technical customers. I don't see how they could make it as a national chain with thousands of locations, even if they had not built a reputation for selling defective items at extremely high prices.

As far as I'm concerned, Radio Shack's business model has long been to sell overpriced but inferior merchandise. In many areas it is the only place one can physically go to by some electronic parts, so it does get some traffic even from people who are reluctant to buy from them. If they were to go on-line only, I expect that they would soon be out of business completely, a result that I would not feel bad about because just maybe someone else might try to fill the void.

Even the simplest things bought from RS seem to be plagued with defects. I've bought cables from them and found them intermittent and once I bought a simple 2 to 1 telephone jack and, when my phone wouldn't dial when connected through it, I found it was wired wrong. Their electronic component "substitutes" are frequently improperly spec'ed. And as to price, I recently saw a Raspberry Pi kit in Radio Shack, it was priced well over $100.

May these stores just be the first, I'll be glad to see them all go.

Wouldn't any first post that says "first post" in it be redundant?

More appropriately, some random, anonymous Internet entity will be able to communicate with you. Of course, the NSA will know who that entity is, so they are really only keeping their identity secret from you. Pretty much like all that spam email that you receive now.

The U.S. currently spends more on defense than the combined total of the next 12 countries, as ranked by defense spending.

But that isn't really a fair comparison. After all, a lot of that spending is really for aggression, not defense.