Andreas Hasenack pointed out on IRC that, on Ubuntu 8.04, his brightness keys do work (as I reported as well), but he is also able to reproduce the num_lock misbehaviour. So it appears that the num lock / gconf issue may be old, but that something new has caused the brightness keys to stop working when that gconf key is set.
Andreas Hasenack pointed out on IRC that, on Ubuntu 8.04, his brightness keys do work (as I reported as well), but he is also able to reproduce the num_lock misbehaviour. So it appears that the num lock / gconf issue may be old, but that something new has caused the brightness keys to stop working when that gconf key is set.