"... am I the only one who has a little sympathy with Intel et al?"
Possibly. Intel didn't invite sympathy when they blatantly lied in their press release to avoid taking responsibility for Meltdown.
They would be happy for people think their chips fall in some grey area between "perfect" and "flawed" but the documentation is very clear - they must prevent memory access via certain kinds of reference in certain conditions - and there is no grey area to hide in.
If you don't put the responsibility for Meltdown at Intel's door, you are expecting blameless organisations to take losses that they shouldn't have to, and setting a bad precedent for responsibility evasion that could lead to less reliable and less secure systems in the future.
If Intel started acting with integrity over this then I would probably start to feel sympathy for them.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
