When programs attempt to steal focus, they should be flashed within the
gnome taskbar and the windows should be flashed. This behavior is what
Windows XP does and its very useful.

Let's say I'm typing within a text editor, and someone sends me a message
with GAIM. Let's pretend that you can't turn off the r"aise window on
event" in GAIM or don't want to (in fact, turning this behavior off seems
to still cause windows to be raised for the first message someone sends).
So I'm typing away, and suddenly the window pops up and I press enter to
complete the line without reacting fast enough and i send this junk I was
writing in the text editor to the person who's sending the message to me.
Or even worse, it has to do with them and I didn't want them to see it.
Anyway, that's one example. Another is when say a program finishes a task
and tries to raise itself and you don't want it to.

In Windows XP, the window is flashed, and not raised. This is a less
intrusive behavior but still noticeable. You could also add an optional
sound for accessibility reasons (embrace and improve).

If you are still not convinced, turn off popup blocking in Mozilla and go
here (be ready to kill the mozilla process, if you can):
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/you.html

What happens is the stupid little windows keep popping up and stealing
focus and they are all moving, so they are stealing focus when they move,
and you have to keep clicking in the console to type what's necessary to
kill this application.