I feel like with most security research the only way to get $INDUSTRY to take things seriously is if there's an easy tool for anyone to use that exposes the weakness, like firesheep with https. For individuals driven by money, you need to get their customers riled up. So in a way, developing open tools to exploit weaknesses is a way of countering the weaknesses in the long run.

I'm surprised the article doesn't suggest increasing side-channel noise as a crude interim counter.

Certainly it would be a big power drain, but for the security conscious it sounds like a reasonably easy short-term solution. That, and not accessing sensitive data in public, of course.