love it or hate it.. if you are making a living off the net, we got to learn to live with Google's PR for now.
I agree that PR is kinda useless unless you want to impress potential buyers or advertisers. Some of my low PR sites are way more successful than my high PR sites. I've got a few abandoned sites, with virtually zero traffic, that still manage to keep a high PR. PR means absolutely nothing to me.
I got same reaction as you buddy that PR is some kind of BAD joke but in reality PR formula is master piece invention, Only PR formula makes google the GOOGLE, the best search Engine. Pr mostly depend on out bound link, link counts not age not traffic, for Better PR start making LINK backs::
Ok, so why does the site I am talking about have a PR3? There is nothing there! So does this mean I should just take all content of my domains for a few months, and come back with a PR3?
PR is also added with time. So a couple years old domain will automaticly get PR bigger than 1. Though PR changes every couple of months so you can always stay on the same PR. And i think PR doesent really have much importance, except in few cases!
That domain is not very old though, I have some domains that actually have content and they dont even have a pagerank.