Windows 7: Remove Show Desktop Button

Why does Microsoft insist on giving us useless features that we cant disable without going through x hours of troubleshooting and re-programming?  The current thing for me is the annoying Show Windows Desktop Button in Win 7 thats attached to the start bar and serves no practical function other than to look tacky. 

For those of you who don't know this already, the same function can be achieved by pressing the windows key+d. 

Personally, I find this feature to be inconvenient even for novice users due to its inconvenient location in the bottom right corner; essentially as far away from the start button as physically possible.

I'm a rather advanced user and I decided to switch back to Window$ from Ubuntu after 7 came out because of the performance improvement and support for adobe cs4.  (though thats another story entirely)

I suppose the question I have is where can this little 'feature' be found in the registry so I can remove it?  (or if there is an easier way to remove it i'd be interested in that as well, though Im nearly certain it doesn't exist)

Also as a side note to Microsoft:  Perhaps an update to make this icon movable and removable via gui would be nice, seeing as how im sure several other people do not like it and have less experience than I do in programming and customization.

Edit: Im not interested in 'disabling' the active feature of it, I want to remove it entirely.