The case for avoiding XHTML

Is XHTML all we've been told it is? The main item on the news at sitepoint.com is that maybe there is no benefit in using XHTML at all

Here it is in a nutshell:

1. Browsers decide how to handle a file based on the MIME type that the server sends with it.
2. HTML Web pages are identified with a MIME type of text/html.
3. Pages written in XHTML that are sent with a MIME type of text/html don't benefit from any of the features of XHTML.
4. To benefit from the features of XHTML, pages must be sent as application/xhtml+xml.
5. The most popular Web browser (Internet Explorer 6) cannot view pages sent as application/xhtml+xml.

From this, it follows that you cannot benefit from using XHTML without breaking compatibility with Internet Explorer 6. So you might as well just use HTML.