Standards and NS 4 may have had a rocky start back in 1997, but there's really no excuse for them in the ensuing 5 years and many upgrades to NS for them to not have done something about it in one of the interim releases.
A good article, and one Mark may have been talking about, can be found here:
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/died/ Very readable with some excellent points on why we should "stop the madness!™" and quit supporting something that breaks/holds back the rest of the web
