xfce4, Thunar, and removable drives

[Warren Block]

With xfce4, USB memory sticks or hard drives cause an auto-mount (via 
hal)... and then multiple copies of the same device appear on the 
desktop.

For example, a Sandisk 8G USB stick with one UFS slice filling the whole 
device, volume label "sandisk8g".

With Thunar set to "Mount removable drives when hot-plugged", "Mount 
removable media when inserted", and "Browse removable media when 
inserted", connecting the stick causes two Thunar windows to open. 
Both point to /media/sandisk8g.

Removing the stick cleanly is also a little difficult.  Right-click, 
unmount... and then quickly remove it, or it will be remounted by the 
system and up come the two windows again.

Is this something due to hal seeing new volumes appear under the device 
name (da0s1) and the volume label?  I have not been successful in 
getting hal to stop looking at certain /dev directories.