...fairly recent, but I want to ask about a different thing: shouldn't that revert of hd* creation (in 149-r1) go under a +useflag ? Recent udev works only with recent kernels, recent kernels discourage CONFIG_IDE (33_rc marks it finally as deprecated). Yes, users DEFINITELY need a warning about it, but as it tends to conflict with CONFIG_ATA anyway, most people have it disabled by now (even I do, cause though I have only IDE devices, it made cdrom misbehave in certain conditions (problem known upstream and unlikely to be fixed)).
150 is now in portage so you might want to close this now.
Installation of these rules is now controlled by IUSE="+old-hd-rules".