Read-only flash drives

[Joe Zeff]

Every now and then I buy a flash drive and find that when I mount it 
it's owned by root and read only except by root.  I can, of course, 
change that by using chown and chmod, but that only lasts until I 
unmount the drive.  Generally, I need to reformat the drive to get it 
working properly.  And, it's not just Fedora; my sister uses Xubuntu, 
and has the same issue.  Does anybody know a way to keep this from 
happening, or to fix it without reformatting?