Not unless he also opens Port 8333 on his firewall.

Actually you are... you have the same amount of data as a business does, its that only ~ 8 people can access it .

Now to get more people to run full nodes, do like darkcoin does.. their supernoods get a % of each block that is found.. The more connections you have to your node the more of the btc fees you get.

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Its the problem of blockchain size. Too big in file system. And also it takes a long time for any non-ssd pc to start bitcoin core application.
Everyone is using lightweight wallet now, posing a big threat to the vulnerability of the whole network.

The ant in the antfarm is not doing a whole lot by itself, however in combination the ants are doing a whole lot of work. And every ant contributes.

If every ant decided they were unimportant, all work would halt to a grind.

Every participant in the bitcoin system is important, even if he only provides a full bitcoin node. He adds strength to the distributed network.

Where some people opt for the simplest solutions and need monetary incentives, others see things at a larger scale and with their visionary attitude realize that every little effort contributes to the growth and success of bitcoin.

The more distributed the block chain is, the better.

Every business who wants bitcoin to succeed should run a full node. While just getting paid through bitpay and then immediately converting to fiat is better than nothing, this is not what bitcoin should be, the day when we have a full chain, where the farmer produces milk, which a techie buys with bitcoins he made from selling hosting and the datacenter accepts bitcoins for his servers, and the landlord and peering partners of the datacenter also accepts bitcoin, then we have the full chain. No fiat, only bitcoin.

Since it is possible today to buy many things and services with bitcoin, I think people who are really into bitcoin should prioritize trade with bitcoins. Just converting immediately to fiat should not be the goal.  On the same breath, those believers of bitcoin should also run a full node, imo.

While the individual cannot achieve anything significant on its own, the collective as a whole can change the world. Well, that's maybe stretching it for now, but Bitcoin's off to a good start!

Linode

https://www.linode.com/pricing

Digitalocean

https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/

That's the 2 most popular VPS provider. Few minutes to launch, very flexible.

Nice. I didn't know this one.

Also you can use the CPU of the VPS and mine Monero to reduce the cost by about 50% to 100%.

CPU coins used to be exclusively mined on VPS.
It depend of the TOS but mining do not use the bandwidth or the HDD at all, only the CPU.
In most case it fit the TOS.
I never seen any VPS miner getting banned (unless it was on a trial account).
They may warn you by email you if you use 1000 VPS only to mine but it is really exceptional.

That's the problem. You are clogging the node's resources if you really do mine. There are certain providers which allow you to mine on their VPS but I could guarantee their price is high and the performance isn't good as people mine on the VPS, consuming the resources. Take a look at the TOS of one VPS provider.
VPS mining is usually forbidden on most VPS unless you have a dedicated server which only you use the whole node.However, they are quite expensive compared to a VPS. I have tried doing it once and I was banned within 24 hours for continuously consuming the whole server resource, this is classified under server abuse and I was terminated immediately.

I could miss $2 a month to support the network. But to me it looks like centralization of bitcoin nodes. Do those nodes share the same ip address? Of so, what's the benefit of running them?
Wouldn't it be better for the network if the nodes are geographically spread around the world, all using different hardware and ip addresses? Or are vps' considered "better than nothing"?
In other words, what's better? A low end home server running a node or a shared centralized node on high end hardware?

Each VPS has a different unique IP.
With most providers, you can chose the location between many countries.
Yes, a VPS does its job as full Bitcoin node.
VPS are great node.

You are looking for a fast and stable Internet connection. The hardware doesn't matter much. You just need enough space on the HDD.

EDIT : As ranochigo said, you must be careful about the settings in bitcoin.conf
You need to ask help and advices from knowledgeable members.