Having to carry around bags just incase you might want to use them is a fairly significant inconvenience. Also while the thin free ones are easier to carry, they are also more easily damaged.

Plastic bags also have other uses, for instance i use them as rubbish bags and when they're full tie them up and put them into a larger bin outside. Compared to full size garbage bags, smaller bags occupy less space in the house, and fill up quicker so they have less time to start to smell.

On the other hand, packaging in stores is getting far more annoying than it was years ago...
If i go shopping in the car i would prefer to use boxes than plastic bags. Supermarkets used to have a pile of empty boxes near the tills that you could put your shopping in, and boxes slide into the back of a car much more easily and don't tip over spilling their contents. Stores get their stock delivered in boxes, and any given supermarket will be discarding hundreds of empty boxes every day.

And then the actual packaging on goods is often excessive, which then means it needs more bags/boxes to put it in... And don't even get me started on blister packaging, that should be banned.

Wanting to work remotely is probably putting potential employers off too... A lot of people can't understand how someone can work remotely, and just assume they're sitting around playing games all day. They would rather see you sitting at a desk so they think you're working, even if you might be sitting there using slashdot all day.

Killing someone is also actively harming them, wether by killing them you are harming them more or less than allowing them to live in pain is highly subjective and down to the individual case.

While i agree that people should be allowed to kill themselves should they wish to die (and should state this in advance incase they end up in a situation where they are physically unable to express their desire to die), it has to be the choice of the individual and not their family or doctors. Were I a doctor, i'd not want to help someone kill themselves unless i was 100% sure it was what they explicitly wanted, you would be left with a feeling of guilt knowing that you may have murdered someone against their will... Otherwise i would assume that their survival instinct is in tact and they would want to remain alive.

Exactly, it shouldn't be what Scott or the doctors want, it should be down to what his father wants... And if he's no longer capable of making or expressing his desires, then we have to go based on what he stated he would want when he was able to say so.
If he has never expressed a desire to die rather than go on living in pain, then it isn't anyone else's decision to end his life. And as for the talk of torture, if he truly was as far gone as the article claims it's unlikely that he was actually experiencing any of that pain.

Having a locked box on open display screams "I HAVE SOMETHING VALUABLE IN HERE WORTH STEALING"... It may make your goods slightly harder to steal, but it also makes it more likely that someone would want to steal them.
If i regularly had valuables in my car i'd want to both lock them up and hide them from view.

I also tend to leave compartments open when i leave the car, to show that there's nothing in them. I have had car windows smashed in the past by people who went looking through the various compartments (which were empty so they got nothing)...

Well saying that you spent $200k of police resources (ie taxpayers money) to bust a guy who made $50k of drugs wouldnt go down so well.

If nations were small and people were free to move between them, its likely that the popular nations would very quickly become over populated and collapse, while a small number of dictators would each have their own small private nation.

That may well be a "selling point" of democracy, but in most existing democracies it serves to do little more than to fool the masses into thinking they actually have any say.
In many systems there are only 2 parties who have any chance of "winning", and both of them are basically the same. They are both keen to maintain the status quo and have no qualms about handing over to their sister party for a few years because they know that's far preferable to a true revolution which would likely result in them never having power again.

Well it's down to luck with a hereditary monarchy... The ruler is there because he was born as the son of the previous ruler... You could get a benevolent ruler, or you could get a dictator. Family traits will come into it too, so it depends how the first monarch in the family got to his position.

On the other hand, a democratic system encourages and rewards those who are power hungry and greedy to fight their way to the top.

We also tend to have a mix of the two systems, and end up getting the worst of both. Only those from the ruling class will ever succeed at politics, and those who may potentially be benevolent are unlikely to be ruthless enough to get to the top, such that we always end up with the most power hungry.

A currency where every transaction can be analyzez and data mined by anyone... That puts everyone on a level playing field.
With traditional currency only a small group of organisations can get access to transaction data, which includes the NSA but doesn't include you.

There was a story recently about how yahoo did fight such a demand, lost, and were forced to keep it a secret...

Something being vague and subjective actually makes it MORE of a risk from a security and business continuity standpoint... Cost is well understood, and easy to assess the negatives of higher costs...
Making your business dependent on something you have no control of is very dangerous, you need to be able to have as much control as possible, you need to know how your data is stored and you need to have an exit strategy - that is a plan in place should the existing infrastructure fail or need to be replaced for whatever reason. Using software controlled by a single supplier is a HUGE risk in this scenario, especially when YOUR data is stored in formats also controlled by that supplier and which are difficult to migrate to something else.

What if your supplier goes bankrupt? What if they discontinue the product you depend on? What if they change the product in ways that are detrimental to your business? What if your supplier decides to expand into your area of business, becoming your competitor? What if they decide to increase prices? What if they stop supporting the version you currently use?

All of these are risks which are outside of your control and difficult to manage, if you have the sourcecode under a suitably liberal license then the worst case is that you can maintain it yourself or pay someone else to do so. Wether you do or not depends on other factors such as the importance of the software/data, the size of your organisation, how many others are in the same boat and can pool resources etc but having the option available means that you are always better off than with proprietary software where you don't have these options at all.

Many companies maintain software for many reasons other than a direct desire to sell that software for profit... The idea that the only way to get compensated is to sell the software is ridiculous.

Some write code for their own use, and then contribute that code to others. It's worth it because you need those changes, and you don't lose anything by allowing others to use them too.
Some write software because it helps them sell other products or services - classic example being hardware drivers.
Some write software to learn, for fun or because its part of their studies.

1, This is no different to proprietary software. Or in many cases no training is done and users are expected to just get on with it, which can also happen in both cases.

2, Most software is very mature at this stage, it's unlikely that you will need many new features. Stagnation is actually a good thing with mature software, because in many cases the changes a vendor would make at best don't benefit you and at worst are actually detrimental to you. Just look at all the users running old versions of windows and msoffice for an example of this.

That said it's better to have the option there should you ever need it, and with open source you always have the option to develop the features you require yourself. You can also pool your resources with other users who have similar requirements to you, which is basically how proprietary vendors work only your cutting out the profit for the middlemen and thus doing things more efficiently.

You also don't have to manage a team to maintain the software, you always have the option of paying someone else to supply and maintain the open source software for you, again this is an option thats available to you but that you don't have to use. You have a choice of multiple suppliers too, something that proprietary software rarely gives you.

The bottom line is that while all software *can* be expensive, FOSS always offers more flexibility than proprietary software and there is no inherent advantage whatsoever in single-vendor proprietary software over open source.

Well the idea that you need an engineering degree to be an engineer isn't an ideal situation either...

It is quite possible to scrape through a degree course while being incompetent at the job.
People with degrees don't necessarily have any real experience, and could easily be incompetent as a result.
The requirement to have a degree discriminates against those who lack the financial resources to go to an appropriate university.
It is quite possible to obtain degrees through corruption too.

What you need is a more pragmatic system, where people get the job based on their personal ability and will to learn, not based on the bits of paper or friends they acquired.
And everyone who's just starting out should work under someone more experienced, it is extremely useful to learn from someone experienced on the job.

I don't know about other areas, but for technical roles i would much rather recruit someone who's spent their time hacking in their parents basement because they have a genuine interest in the subject than someone who has crammed their way through a bunch of exams because they see money at the end of it.