Not being able to change the volume on the Media Player without having to unlock the screen was one of the major issues I used to have with the N900 but PR1.2 fixed that. We can now use the hardware volume keys even if the screen is locked (though apparently only with the native Media Player).

That just leaves one final step to make it possible to control the Media Player completely from your pocket - enabling song skipping with long presses of volume keys. Anyone have an idea of how to make that happen?
Are the volume key events for long presses different from short presses, and if so could it be possible to write a script to enable song skipping?