[ale] Q: How do I make permissions on /dev/* 'sticky'?

[Mills.J at ems-t.com (Mills, John M.)]

ALErs -

I notice that access permissions of '/dev/*' devices are reset to
defaults when my systems reboot, losing access for ordinary users where
I may have set it manually (i.e., /dev/ttyS* for 'minicom', etc). I
conjecture this is an effect ("feature"?) of the '/dev' filesystem since
such permission changes used to be persistent, but that's only a guess.

Q1: How can I define these permissions so they receive my new settings
on reboot, instead of the system defaults?

Q2: How can I add new devices to those created on reboot? I could add
'mknod' lines to rc.local, or similar, but is there a less "clunky" way
to do it?

TIA.

 - Mills