[NTLUG:Discuss] Where do USB devices appear these days?

[steve]

I just recently upgraded to SuSE 9.3 from 9.1 and I find that my
USB devices don't work like they used to.

I'm a pretty dedicated command-line person - so I dislike pointy-clicky
things.

In the past, it was all very logical - I plugged in my camera or my
USB thumb drive or hard drive - and a few seconds later, the device
would be automounted in /media - easy.

Now, one of about four things happens:

1) Nothing.

2) The device DOESN'T appear in /media - and the KDE file manager
thingy pops up (totally un-asked-for) and tells me that my camera
is in:

     camera://Olympus_whatever/

3) It appears in /media but the popup thingy doesn't appear.

4) It appears in /media AND the popup thingy appears.

It's weird.

But what is this URL-like "camera://" thing?  Whatever happened
to filenames and paths and such?   I presume this is just a
thin veneer of cuteness over the underlying file system - so
where *is* 'camera://'.

I *hate* this ongoing cute-ification!