Applications in notification area I noticed that some ROMs (mainly HD ones like insertcoin) embed additional row with active applications into sliding notifications area. It's completely useless and makes that small area even smaller. Is there any way to get rid of this "feature"?
The simple answer is no.  You'd have to re-skin that part of the ROM and also dig into the code and remove whatever's doing that, most likely.  If it bothers you enough you should just switch ROMs.