I would be more inclined to be sympathetic to the cause of the author, and the ridiculous amount of people who upvoted this (wow, demographics change on HN, pg wasn't kidding) were he/she to show more than a three hour understanding of CSS.

Obviously, when you can produce something like this: http://www.csszengarden.com/, showing how a single html page can be manipulated in an infinite number of ways, it isn't CSS that's lacking, but your knowledge of it.

I'm sorry if this isn't the popular opinion on this board, but as someone that coded tables and then made the transition, I can assure you that css is a much more powerful medium for web page layout, despite its quirks.