I'm not really adding anything of value to this discussion, but I've always loved reading his code reviews. I have an unshaken belief in the genius that is John Carmack.
Oh yeah. Flashback to the 90s: I got Q3Test with some magazine's cover CD and had barely-56k internet at the time so couldn't play FPSes at home until CS got popular, but that didn't matter - I was too busy wandering around the included level with my jaw on the desk.
i was downloading the test with my 33.6k modem. back then, in germany, flatrates where not yet common, so i did not want to fall in the trap and waste alot of money playing online.
i remember that some phone provider was having a "free internet" day (you could dial in for free if you where able to get one of the limited spots) and i was up 5 in the morning before school to play a free round of quake 3 test... good times.
For those who may not be familiar with id's titles, this is a code review of the older idTech3 engine. He also recently published a code review for the newer idTech4 (Doom 3): http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php
His amazing site includes code reviews for several other id software titles.
Most people will visit the page, scroll down a screen or two and leave it since they're not game programmers.
So, just speculating, he's no stranger to bandwidth spikes so perhaps the approach employed significantly saves on bandwidth during these periods, ultimately whether it's a conscious attempt to save or just a webdev quirk I don't know.
You got it. I implemented lazy-loading for the precise case you described: Save bandwidth from people that don't want to read the full article.
I tested it on Chrome, FireFox and Safari: I did not find it annoying....but maybe it is because I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone ready slowly and I have a DSL bandwidth...