Peer review mostly guarantees that the paper is not ridiculously wrong. It's a pretty small hurdle to clear and whether or not a paper passes peer review depends mostly on the mood of the reviewers. I have received completely contradictory reviews for the same paper.
Depends on the venue you publish in. One side effect of getting rid of peer reviews is that you need another indicator if a paper is worth reading, most of the time that's going to be author reputation. This means it's difficult for work from lesser known authors to get noticed (similarly to what happened here).
It is a step forwards. The important thing is to get rid of the journals, then new evaluation systems can rise from the ashes. The peer review is letting more and more crap through anyway.
