the "Your $HOME/.dmrc file has incorrect permissions" story

[albi]

on a few breezy-installations the following error appears :

"Your $HOME/.dmrc file has incorrect permissions and is being ignored.
This prevents the default session and language from being saved. File 
should be owned by user and have 644 permissions."

this is however complete nonsense because the file has already 644 
permissions (and if you remove ~/.dmrc, then it still complains)

looking at this :
http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/lofiversion/index.php/t27048.html

i just found out that this error indeed stops showing up after changing 
my home-dir permissions to 755, however changing it to 751 does *not* 
stop this error-message showing up :-(

i find this a completely unacceptable way of encouraging 755 permissions 
on home-dirs in a network

...is there another work-around ?