It is strange that author publishes (source: http://www.joeharrison.co.uk/projects/responsiveicons ) the information from Smashing Magazine containing the methods of responsive SVG and still uses the poorest method.

I think you've got it backwards. Joe Harrison first published responsiveicons.co.uk and the Smashing Magazine article is a later improvement on it. He didn't use the newer method because it wasn't around when he created the page.