One of the things I found annoying with Gnome is that any time I access one of my Fat32/NTFS partitions it ends up placing an icon on the desktop until I reboot. Since I do most of my programming in a transparent shell I like to keep my desktop clean. After doing a bit of research I found a solution:

Hit Alt+F2 and run gconf-editor

Go to Apps -> Nautilus -> Desktop

Remove the check mark from volumes_visible

You’ll notice that the Configuration Editor (gconf-editor) is similar to Window’s Registry Editor. With that being said, use the same amount of caution you’d use when editing your Window’s Registry.