I agree with SR, the new namespaces feature has solved a number of problems for me which would have required horrible coding to solve otherwise.
An example use:
Say you are making a small script, and write a class to connect to a database, calling it 'connection'. If you find your script useful and gradually expand it into a large application, you may want to rename the class. Without namespaces, you have to change the name and every reference to it (say in inheriting objects), possibly creating a load of bugs. With namespaces you can drop the related classes into a namespace with one line of code, and less chance of errors.
This is by no means one of the biggest problems namespaces solve; I would suggest reading about their advantages before citicising them. They provide an elegant solutions to several problems involved in creating complex systems.