> Solution: Mandate visually encoded supported standards on the USB cable in colored ring form, a la resistors.

I agree in principal, but please don't do it with colored rings. Many of us have much more limited color perception due to colorblindness. I recently purchased some 8 cable 1/4" TRS snakes, and the only thing identifying which connector on one side of the snake was connected to a connector on the other side were colored bands--many of which I couldn't tell apart. I ended up pulling out a multimeter to test continuity, and then labeled then with unique glyphs on each end that weren't dependent on color (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.).