That to me means a blockage of the system and possible overload of the server.
As others have already said in slightly different words, If you're sitting there for several minutes while a Daily Dose (or other image heavy) page is loading, the FR server sees no load at all. The FR server has already sent out the plain text html for that page to you; now your computer is hung up waiting for some other computer (perhaps Yahoo or Whitehouse.gov) to send the image (gif or jpg) bits to you.
And having a faster PC on your desktop, with more memory, is, as you note, is no more useful than replacing your old Ford with a Ferrari while waiting for a back ordered part to show up at the local store. When the part finally comes in, three weeks later, you can get to the store and back in 3 minutes instead of 5 to pick it up. Whoopee doo. Or, in this case, when the bits finally get down to your PC, it can display the image in 300 microseconds instead of 800 microseconds.