I regularly have to recompile a couple of Ubuntu packages after excising undocumented junk. I really should submit a patch with a c̶o̶n̶f̶i̶g̶ ̶f̶i̶l̶e̶ g̶c̶o̶n̶f̶ dconf option that does the same. But for now I haven't found the time and tell myself that at least I can comment out the junk code and recompile on Ubuntu.
Incidentally, to disable all chatter at login (as documented in man login, and it actually still works in Ubuntu 11.10):
By the way, your attempt at striking out "config file gconf" looks bad on Chrome running on Windows 7 -- every letter is followed by a box. Looks fine on OSX Chrome though.
Playing with: http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php it seems that Internet Explorer won't display the strikeout characters because the font on HN is set to Verdana, which doesn't have the combining character. If I create a page without specifying the font, it works fine.
I have Verdana on my system, but the browsers and font libraries I have installed mean that the glyph is taken from another font when one is missing. I'm surprised Windows 7 browsers don't do the same. Or maybe you don't have the glyph in any font, which would also be disappointing.
Of course, a real webpage would use <strike> or CSS, and strikeouts are usually poor typography anyway, except as part of lame jokes. But other unicode combining-characters can be of real use.
Incidentally, to disable all chatter at login (as documented in man login, and it actually still works in Ubuntu 11.10):