Hmm sad to see all the flamewar above, but back on topic.
1) I find it very strange that there has been no public announcement of which exploit or vulnerability the proposed patch fixes. Where's the changelog?? The very vague information I found on Intel's website doesn't leave me wanting to install the patch even if it were good. Patches can have unintended consequences and break other things.
2) The entire code is heavily obfuscated and no telling what is in it. Backdoors are possible.
3) The code does not "patch" the Intel chipset per-say, it runs quote "at system boot". If it were a real patch I would certainly hope it would flash the chipset, rather than installing something as root into my operating system and running at boot time.
I suggest everyone write to Intel and ask: 1) What does the microcode fix exactly 2) Why not opensource it?
