No its because the industry is changing, and there is a number of independent publishers offering authors similar rates, and those services (e.g. smashworlds). Amazon are sticking with the times and taking advantage of new technology to offer authors a different deal.

Considering that's what Amazon does with their kindle app (if you read a series the next book will usually be in the recommendations section on the Amazon home page), it wouldn't surprise me if they did that.

ironically Amazon does the same.

In don't know about Comixology, but amazon pays independent ebook publishers 70% on items with a list price between $2 and $10 and 35% the rest of the time.

Not at all, just because something immoral is being done for a strategic military reason does not make it more moral.

The difference with Jerusalem is the United Nations specifically placed restrictions on Israel forbidding them from annexing those territories (for good reason). This makes it very different from individual states recognising it as belonging to different entities, which is the case with Crimea,

So Australia isn't a democratic country? I'm going to have to disagree with you there.
I would argue that it is a sign of a bad democracy that few people turn out to vote. Whether this election is valid or not is an entirely different question.
Where there international observers? Where people coerced? Was the counting process public and valid? (The answer to two of these isn't currently clear).

If you use a stable distro, I've only ever had this happen on release updates (with nvidia drives, or ubuntu not disabling hibernate before upgrading usually being the cause). On release upgrades however I always schedule a few days downtime to fix the inevitable inability to boot.

because aptitude always seems to want to unistall half my packages whenever I run it and I don't have time to work out why,

it's not rocket science that prevents that, it's the cost of building the rockets.

That dosen't explain the automated communication systems that got turned off (whilst over satelite systems continued to operate)

The fire theory is further ruled out by the engine data sent to satelites, which would presumably use some of the same systems.

They actually haven't covered the whole of the Australian search area yet, its massive and in the middle of nowhere, in bad weather.

The plane did have systems for location tracking with satellites, they were turned off by a person or persons unknown. (one of the theories was the satellite array broke, but that doesn't make sense with the engine data).

I would imagine that these sensors in the engines that talk to satelites may be somewhat difficult to shut-down (given that they weren't shut-down when the plane was diverted originally). If it was hijacked they would probably have to work that out before they can fly it again.
One thing I am interested in though is I swear early on they were saying that some passengers cell phones were ringing (but no answers), why has no one tried to locate these?