I posted the following as a long comment on Assaf Arkin's blog. It was specifically in response to his blog post, but also more generally in response to the flack the W3C's been getting recently. While a lot of the critisism is justified, some people seem to be making more of it than it really deserves, and are pushing for more proprietary solutions and less reliance on W3C standards.

Since not all of the original comment is pertinent to the discussion, I edited it and adding to it as approriate. I have no idea who's going to come by my little rarely-posted-to and mundane blog to read about my (probably ill-informed) opinions, but I guess I'll find out.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional web designer, and most of my experience w/ W3C standards has been as a spectator and casual user. Although I have been frustrated with uncooperative web layouts, most of my angst gas been toward poor browser implementations.