It amazes me that Hollywood would have us believe military satellites can read your morning newspaper from ten miles away. Obviously untrue.
Its only a slight exaggeration, while you will never be able to read the newspaper, it is possible to recognize a newpaper but that also requires perfect atmospheric conditions, something you almost never have over an ocean.
People also fail to grasp just how big the search area is. Something like 8 million square kilometers. Enough to fit 8,000,000,000,000 newspapers and you are looking for partially submerged debris (possibly not much bigger than a newspaper) hidden in waves. To say thats monumental is an understatement.
But I don't understand how they can't get ANYthing? Just on the simplest most basic level, there were 250 people with cell phones, and I'm sure they had onboard wifi, they can't use the telcom satellites to triangulate the last ping...?
Cell phones dont connect to satellites, nor does wifi. The antenna's and frequency simply dont work at that range and crossing the ionosphere, even if there is something that tries to register it. If the plane had some satellite data connection for onboard internet or telephone, then Im assuming it was shut down along with acars, transponder and all other comms.