it doesn't suck. it keeps it so that A) the database doesn't get hammered and the board stays online and serves quickly B) people on slower connections don't have to suffer thru a ton of inappropriately sized/compressed images (anytime the "image size changed to X% of the original. click to view it at actual size." tag appears above an image) for posting to a web forum
however, using smarts, most people have figured out that starting another post in a thread gives you four more images to post--which, unfortunately, reduces the efficacy of B.
there's a FAQ item on this
here.