Interesting development on Flight 370

The pings that before were thought to have indisputably come from the lost plane, have now come under doubt.

Audio recordings of the 'ping' signals believed to have come from the black box of Flight MH370 will now not be released as doubt grows over whether they are connected with the missing plane.
The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) headed by Angus Houston told the Herald Sun that the search group's original confidence the four accoustic 'ping' signals were from the plane had waned and the recordings would not be made public.
'The recordings of the detections will not be released at this point in time,' the JACC said.
'We continue to pursue this lead to either discount or confirm the area of the detections as the final resting place of MH370.

Via the Professional Pilots Rumor Network:

"Examination of the communications problem has established that a hardware defect exists in the transponder mounted on the Ocean Shield, and a defect may also exist in the transponder mounted on the Bluefin-21," JACC said. "This inhibits the ability of the two devices to communicate with each other."

The faults discovered may have led to a re-assessment of the interpretation of the pings recorded, that then placed serious doubt on what was actually recorded.

If this is the case, then it's a major blow to the whole search exercise, and that effectively throws the search effort back to almost square one.

So no debris, no results from the search of the ocean floor, and now, no confidence that the pings they previously thought for sure were from the plane, are real. 

Now what?  The chances of ever finding the plane are nearing zero.  What the cost of all this will ultimately be will be interesting to figure.