Comment 5 for bug 636672

Hmm, not that any human will ever read this -- but I found that this is caused *somewhere* by gnome-power-manager.

By removing it from my start-up applications, my screen starts at full brightness (although I have no control over the brightness with the hardware controls) -- but once I start gnome-power-manager or an application that uses it (e.g. the the Update Manager or the Power Management menu) -- then my screen returns to its normal relative darkness.

If I had more faith in the Ubuntu bug reporting system, then I would file another bug specifically for gnome-power-manager; however, I have grown to expect absolutely nothing from this process except verbal abuse from developers.