For those suffering, possible workarounds to the breakage the workaround causes are: a) to change monitor settings with the Gnome control panel, temporarily undo the workaround; or b) drive xrandr from the command line or use the arandr GUI front-end to xrandr instead of the Gnome GUI.
I applied the workaround in https:/ /bugs.launchpad .net/ubuntu/ +source/ linux/+ bug/539477/ comments/ 64 to make super+p work again in Maverick at the expense of breaking the Gnome monitor settings GUI.
For those suffering, possible workarounds to the breakage the workaround causes are: a) to change monitor settings with the Gnome control panel, temporarily undo the workaround; or b) drive xrandr from the command line or use the arandr GUI front-end to xrandr instead of the Gnome GUI.