The fact that this aircraft has been missing for nearly six days is an indictment and embarrassment to the regulations, manufacture, and the various agencies that control civil aviation. This is not dissimilar to the Titanic board of inquiry that focused on the actions of the crew rather than the fact that Titanic was certified to sail with only 50% lifeboat capacity. My point is how can you certify to 330 if you have no ability to find it in an emergency?
All well and good to bang your fists on the table and shout and scream, but allow me to remind you of one thing.
First flight of the 777 was (according to Wikipedia) June 12th 1994.
That means design, development etc. would have been occurring in the 5-10 years prior to 1994.
The world of technology was a vastly different place then.
Retrofiting onto an old design is probably a right pain from both a manufacturing and regulatory point of view.
That is probably why it is the way it is, and why, going forward we'll probably see developments. But the developments will be as result of technology making it easier / cheaper to do stuff than it was in 1994 ... rather than as a specific consequence of this incident.
What I am surprised at though, is given satellites and other secret squirrel monitoring systems out there, that the aircraft has not been located by the intelligence community by now..... (although I guess the conspiracy theorists might suggest they've been gagged by the big cheeses in the name of "national secewwity"!).