I think the point of them not offering a patch is an asshole tactic to get users to buy upgrades. I know that there is no patch being issued for Win2k or NT systems, so it doesnt seem likely that there will be a patch for any beta versions now that the alpha has been released.
Side note: Can anyone explain this to me? If you machines are set to automatically update from the time servers why is this even an issue?
Does M$ suck that badly that they allowed their code to make this a serious problem?