[geoffb]

You're assuming that your static assets (js, css, images) aren't served from a CDN (pretty much the standard at companies like Yahoo!). When your main server is serving just the HTML it's much more likely that your requests could double.

[enneff]

Any website serving its assets from a CDN will be a) unlikely to make a mistake like this empty image src thing, and b) have a well-cached front-page that would be unlikely to impact on server load.

[boucher]

Maybe. It's still a bit alarmist though. For 99% of sites, it will barely have an effect. Best practices for websites serving millions of pages a day truly are different than for websites serving thousands of pages a day. They are also different for web apps versus largely static pages. There is too much emphasis on absolutes in the web development community.