There's little doubt or debate that, thanks to Internet Explorer, the HTML TABLE tag was used and abused by web designers in Web 1.0; but is manipulation of DIV and UL, LI any better?  

I get it; the current take is that tables are bad. (Well, I wouldn't say they are bad for displaying tabular data, after all, that's what they were designed for.) There's nothing that garners more ooohs and aaaahs and finger-pointing amongst competitive developers and designers than the TABLE tag. And people that manage web developers, but generally don't know a thing about code, will be of the first to ask if a web designer or developer uses tables.  (I have a bit of a sore spot here, as I once got asked in a client interview why my sorting and paging GridViews weren't using DIV. {face-palm} I got out of there as quickly as I could and gave them a Sarah Palin, "Thanks, but no thanks.")  

So, enter the mighty DIV, or division, heralded by SEO consultants as always "best". First, let me say using (absolutely positioned) DIV instead of TABLE to match "'standards du jour' crowd" is like using a wrench to drive a nail into a board. IMHO, these SEO-consultants that are brainwashing business people into believing that (all) tables are bad have done them a major disservice. You can do it, it's just not a lot of fun, and it's really not the right tool for the job. Also consider, DIV has problems with tabular data. If a single word is longer than width of DIV, TABLE cell, TD will naturally extend, but DIV will not.  So, if you want to use DIV to display tabular data so you can feel better at Code Camp, knock yourself out.  (Personally, I'll use the hammer to drive in the nail, not the wrench.)

Let me also say that I not a TABLE fanatic, either. Tables are slow (and actually last) to render, and I like the speed of DIV, but they lack control. There's actual a very comical website made by a design firm that talks a little more about this and how they instruct their coders to try DIV layouts for 47 minutes, and if they haven't succeeded, give up and use tables.  

But what really gets my proverbial goose is the bastardization of list item, or LI.

The whole "standards compliant / we love semantics" crowd that hates TABLE for layout however holds the highly hypocritical belief that turning LI into just about anything other than a "list item" and CSS'ing the death out of it isn't really a problem.  We use UL/LI to make all sorts of things we probably shouldn't be making out of unordered lists and list items. And if you're really have some downtime, you can even make the solar system.  

Try doing that with tables!  (You have 47 minutes to figure it out.)   :-)