USB devices

[Joep L. Blom]

I have a problem with the assignation of external USB devices.
I can see all of them in my virtual system (VMware) where they are shoen 
and some assigned (and of course I cannot use them in my host 
understandably). However, if I disconnect them from my virtual machine, 
I don't know how to address them.In older versions of ubuntu it was easy 
as USB devices were assigned to /dev/tty/USB0 but now I have found with 
lsusb I can only see the Bus # Device # and ID number (and the details 
with switch -v) but how the device can be accessed by a program is 
unclear for me.
Hardware AMD Phenom II: Ubuntu 10.04.
I hope somebody can clarify this for me.
Joep