This is why ext3 is a poor choice for a large % of users, it lacks the ability to not care about ownership. Unless your linux desktop user id and your maemo user id are numerically equal, you're going to keep running into ownership problems. Files that you write while connected via USB aren't going to be visible and/or writable to maemo applications, and vice versa. You can get around this by transferring everything via wireless ssh, but it's much slower than connecting directly. My Linux PC and my Linux phone talk via FAT32. Sucks doesn't it.