[WSG] Server-side includes?

[Chris Lamberson]

I suppose I have always very much disliked server-side includes, for no reason I can immediately think up, they just seem like bad form. But if I really think about it, it doesn't matter what goes on as long as it gets to the client in a standards-compliant, semantically correct form. A business partner of mine wants to use includes in our site, and I want to tell him no, but I also can't think of a good reason to give him. My question is: are server-side includes good, bad, or neither in the eyes of standards and semantics?