If you gave me a big shovel and gave 30 people spoons that equalled the size of my shovel, who's to say we wouldn't have the job done in the same amount of time? We'd just have lots of little spoonfuls instead of a few big shovel fulls.
Right and for sand the teaspoons might be more efficient because less sand slips off them but for dirt the shovel might be better.
That's the whole point, it's not how quickly the processor cycles or even how much the processor does in one instruction. Rather, it's how well the processor works for some common tasks. In order to totally judge several processors you first have to test them in several different ways and then you can say, "In general, processor X is good for modeling climate because it handles floating points well and processor Y is good for image processing because it handles integers well."
This means that often there will be no one clear winner in a processor comparison and it may just come down to what you need the chip for and how well you understand how to use it. Right now, however, you have Intel pushing the idea that a high clock-rate processor is all that matters. This is misleading because most of the high-clockrate processors achieve this kind of performance by taking the risk of branch mispredictions and also by taking multiple cycles per instruction. These sort of things have an extreme negative effect on performance so much of the clock speed is wasted.
Yes, this was a grand challenge. But it would be nice if teams could solve part of the problem at first, get some recognition and minor prize money for that, and then move on.
Nothing is stopping a team from doing this sort of stuff on their own. In fact, a smart team would have already run their vehicle (or previous concepts of it) through the steps that you outline here.
I found myself running as fast as I could, but my mind set up an interesting pipeline. I was always looking five to eight feet in front of me and my brain feverishly tried to parse out what was a rock, what was a branch, what was a big root, what was sloped ground, what was even ground, etc.
This is why new drivers and people who are disorientated or distracted often have trouble driving.
For new drivers there are 2 factors working here. First is the lack of experience of WHERE to look. New drivers often keep their vision trained too close in front of the vehicle. This works for very very low speeds but once you try to go road speeds you just don't have enough time to react. Experience teaches us to lift our eyes higher and seek ahead further in order to drive effectively.
The second factor for new drivers is how to handle this new kind of input. Stuff that you don't worry about when jogging or running becomes a big problem when driving, like corners and wet roads. The increased distance also means that you have to have a different sort of thought process in order to handle the increased amount of information.
With disorientated or distracted drivers they may have the knowledge of how to handle the processing of driving stimuli but since they are at diminished capacity they are not able to do so fast enough. Drunk drivers, for example, often start slewing back and forth because their reactions are lagging behind what their senses are telling them. They turn, overturn, correct, overcorrect, and so on.
Good call there. He definately just did a cut-and-paste. If you take a bit of what he said and search for it on that page you linked to then you can easily see where this is from.
That change is the REAL increase in security - making people realize that they MUST act
Truer words were never said. If people acted instead of meekly waiting around a lot more would get done. Just look at the passengers of that last plane on 9/11. Sure the plane crashed and they all died but it crashed out in the middle of nowhere, not on the side of some building! By sacrificing their lives those people possibly saved thousands of others.
Imagine if the passengers of two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center were able to do the same thing as the passengers of the last plane. If that had happened it is likely that there would have been a much smaller loss of life.
You can be first in line then. Some people will die, no one wants to be first, hence no one does anything.
No problems here with that. I work in the inner city of one of the tougher cities in the US and have faced down guns, knives and other implements of destruction before. If I can save the lives of a couple of hundred people but I have to risk my own then so be it. I don't have a death wish but in a terrorist situation you probably are going to die anyways, why not spend the rest of your life and use it to save some others? Hell if you are lucky you might even get the upper hand quickly and survive!
I thought I'd heard that one of the flight attendants was actually killed early into the hijacking with one of those boxcutters - tough to do with cardboard.
Hmm, I hadn't heard that but my statements still stand. Even if the terrorists did kill a couple of people there is no way they could have stopped the whole plane full of people. If people would just stand up and fight back you would see a whole lot less plane hijackings. Not even a pistol or two is going to be enough to prevent 100 or 200 determined people from stomping a half dozen terrorists.
Terrorists rely on one major factor when they make their plans: most people are easily cowed into inaction. Take that away from the terrorists and their plans are a lot less effective.
I don't know what idiot is coming up with these definitions but they have to go back to school and take Encyclopedia 101 and learn the first rule of a definition: Do not make it self-referencing!
I'll bet that if I was intent on smuggling a blade in, I could hide a much larger blade in something metal
Not to mention that a sharpened piece of hard plastic or other solid material is nearly as effective as any knife and probably much more effective than nail cutters, box cutters, or razor blades. They even make polymer knives that are undetectable to security scanners.
I'm all for security and stopping people from carrying serious weapons onboard an airplane but remember that the terrorists on the 9/11 flights never really had to use their weapons. They had boxes they claimed were bombs and they also had what looked to be knives but for all we know these knives were pieces of cardboard painted silver. They took over the planes mostly with fear and intimidation. Even a half dozen terrorists with nail scissors are going to find it tough to take over a plane if the passengers refuse to be intimidated and instead rush the terrorists. Sure a few people might get hurt but when the odds are 100 passengers verses 6 terrorists with pocket knives I'd say the passengers will easily take back the plane!
Apparently part of the enforcement of the law is to trap anyone trying to understand it into an infinite loop, rendering them incapable of ever using a knife due to their infinite reading of the document...
If the retailers ar the ones who collect the levies, would that mean buying levied media from Costco or Sams would remove the levy? Seeing as the entire ( orginal ) intention of these stores was to be a supplier to other retail stores and government employees?
Generally when you buy at Costco or Sam's items there are two different ways to buy things. The first is as a retail reseller and the second is as a consumer. Consumers have taxes added to their purchases and those taxes are handed back to the government. The retail resellers have a tax ID that basically defers the taxes they would pay on the items. These retail resellers collect the tax when they resell the items and so they are responsible for the taxes.
I'm not exactly sure how this applies to the media tax but I assume it works the same as all other taxes such as sales taxes and gasoline taxes, the final retailer in the chain is the one who collects the taxes.
I posted this in reply to another post, I found a problem with what I had suggested:
I just found out that Printer Setup Utility CAN'T be selected as one of the programs to limit. Dunno why but I was sure that I had done it before. No matter, we now turn to the power of Unix. Log into an account that has admin powers and enter this into a terminal window:
Hit return after entering this. It will ask you for the password to the account you are currently in, enter it.
Now make sure that the users who you don't want to mess around with the printers are not admin users and you are all set. Now only the root account and members of the admin group can use Printer Setup Utility.app. This includes the "Edit Printer List" option, because what that does is launch Printer Setup Utility.app.
The only caveat is that if you ever repair disk permissions by way of Disk Utility it may change those permissions back. Just re-do this hint after repairing permissions.
You know what, I could swear this worked but I just found out that Printer Setup Utility CAN'T be selected as one of the programs to limit. Dunno why but I was sure that I had done it before. No matter, we now turn to the power of Unix. Log into an account that has admin powers and enter this:
It will ask you for the password to the account you are currently in, enter it.
Now make sure that the users who you don't want to mess around with the printers are not admin users and you are all set. Only root and members of the admin group can use Printer Setup Utility.app. This includes the "Edit Printer List" option, because what that does is launch Printer Setup Utility.app.
The only caveat is that if you ever repair disk permissions by way of Disk Utility it may change those permissions back. Just re-do this hint after repairing permissions.
Well, honestly, you can go quite some time without updating on Mac OS X. It's not like Windows where if you don't update immediately you are in mortal danger of being overrun with exploits. You can easily give her instructions to log onto the admin account once a month for software updates or you can just do it yourself periodically.
You can also do as the other poster mentioned and just do the updates through the shell as a cron job or startup item or the like. I believe the command to check and install all updates would be:
she deletes the printer instead of the print job every so often
You can fix that pretty easily, at least under Mac OS X 10.3. Go into her account, run Printer Setup Utility, double-click on any printer she may need. Control-click on the dock icons that pop up and select "Keep in Dock". That way she can just press those icons to see what the printer is printing.
Now go to go to System Preferences->Accounts and make an admin account by. Log into that admin account and go to System Preferences->Accounts. Select your mom's account and click the "Some Limits" button. Click "This user can only use these applications" then click the allow all button. Click the locate button and navigate to Applications->Utilities->Printer Setup Utility and deselect the checkbox. Close the System Preferences.
Now she can't change her printers. She can still see what's printing because the printer is in the Dock. To really be safe you can also make that printer into a desktop printer just by control-clicking on the Dock icon, selecting "Show in Finder" and then option-control-drag it to the desktop. You can also lock her ability to remove items from the Dock by selecting that option in her account settings so that she can't accidently remove the printer from the dock.
this guys will be getting a Cease and Desist shortly. Apple doesn't look kindly on this stuff.
Actually this is old news. They have already had talks with Apple and they have already changed a few things. You can read about it here. Basically they changed the layout some and changed the name to pBop.
*IF* the Neistat's knew about the upcoming programs from Apple, they would have been under NDA and *couldn't* have said anything about them w/o the Apple legal hourds coming down from on high unleashing hell upon them.
I may have not been exactly clear in the way I phrased what I said. The chronology was:
companies start selling batteries and the replacement service
Neistats have problems and call Apple, Apple says not under warranty, etc.
Neistats buy a battery from a company that also sells a replacement service
Neistats break their iPod trying to replace it themselves
Neistats make their video and vandalize Apple posters
Apple begins its own replacement program after what is likely months of planning
Neistats get their video hosted by a generous person who gives them free high-bandwidth hosting as long as they also post about Apple's and other companies replacement programs
Neistats ignore the hosting requirements and post nothing about safe alternatives to replacing the battery yourself
So no NDAs would have been violated. The Neistats chose to not post information that would actually help people who were having battery problems. Instead they chose to flame Apple and sensationalize the whole affair. Yeah, Apple wasn't extremely helpful by saying that it would cost $250 to repair the iPod when they had a program coming out in a few weeks for $100 but then again at that time that was the cost of a repair and the tech who mentioned the $250 cost probably didn't yet know about the soon-to-be-released replacement program.
The fact is that for a charge of about $15 over the cost of the battery the Neistats could have gotten the battery replaced at no risk. They chose to save $15 and an iPod worth a couple of hundred dollars. Is Apple to blame for this? No, these batteries are an industry standard and pretty much all have a 500 charge life-cycle, which Apple mentions in the literature. The non-user-replaceable aspect could be seen by anyone who just looked at the device for a few seconds. Caveat emptor, if you buy a product with a non-user-replaceable part then don't expect to be able to replace that part later.
Meanwhile, the Neistat brothers distributed a hilarious video protesting the 18 month life of the nonreplaceable battery in the original iPod, forcing Apple into emergency spin control mode which resulted in a $99 battery replacement policy to avoid bad press during the launch of the iPod Mini.
Nope, if you check the dates Apple had its battery replacement program and iPod warranty extension program in place BEFORE the Neistat video and website was opened. Apple had been planning the program for months before the Neistat brothers even called them. Not only that but for several months other companies had been offering battery replacement services for about $15 more than the battery.
The Neistat brothers were told of these things, they knew about them but they still went ahead and badmouthed Apple for not having these programs. One of their original web hosts even gave them free bandwidth in exchange for them posting both the video and information about Apple's battery alternatives. The Neistat brothers ignored the web host and they only posted their negative video without seeking to really help others who needed similar services.
Overall it is only a few people who have had battery problems in as short of a time as 18 months. Many people have had their iPods much longer and still have good battery life. Apple has been very up front in saying that the batteries have a life of about 500 complete discharge/recharge cycles, a standard for that type of battery.
There are two computers on my network that never have spyware problems. One of them is the Mac I do all my web surfing on, and the other is the PC I do no web surfing on at all.
Yell me about it. I read all of these stories about "my computer had this virus" and "my computer had this spyware" and I realize that I am missing out on a whole subculture here because of my Macintosh, the subculture of having to constantly fix your computer.
Yeah yeah Macs will eventually get viruses and spyware but the fact is that I haven't worried about either for well over 10 years. I haven't had to install 1 anti-virus program, I haven't had to pay for 1 cleaner program, I haven't had to spend time killing hidden processes and editing registry keys. I haven't had to do anything at all.
I've said it plenty of times, I really don't care what operating system people run. Macintosh, Windows, Linux, Amiga, whatever - if it works for you then have fun! However, you should take a serious look at switching when your operating system becomes so weighed down with subversive programs that you have to spend a considerable amount of time, effort, and cash to keep it operating efficiently.
A while ago I wrote a letter to their support department asking about Mac ports, and I didn't get a friendly, personal letter confirming the Mac and Linux ports from some guy in the trenches, I got one from Mark Rein, Epics V.P.
A company whose big-wigs take the time to answer mail, and who understand the importance of supporting minor platforms is definitely a company I enjoy giving my money too.
Yep, my cash is going right to Unreal Tournament 2004 when it comes out and I'm doing the same to World of Warcraft when that is released. Both Atari/Epic and Blizzard are on the ball here. It's too bad that Bungie went all micro and soft because they also used to be one of the "good guys" before they got swallowed by Bill Gate's greed.
This was a major headache for me the past few weeks. Backup tapes suck. Worms suck harder.
Not to be too flippant but I have yet to have any trouble with any virus on my Mac OS X machines. Yeah, I know, it's a minor platform that will eventually get viruses. However, until then I'm enjoying the peace and quiet!
Come over to the dark side, give a virus-free platform a try!:-)
If you had spent this money on CDs, you'd have around 25 albums, or approximately 300 songs. These songs would be completely unrestricted in what you could do with them, be in a non-lossy format, and able to be stored in a reasonably secure manner
First of all, the AIFF audio in a CD is a lossy format. You can't sample music at any bitrate and expect to retain all of the information. A 44kHz 16 bit sampled song (the format used by CD audio)only retains the frequencies below 22kHz, due to Nyquist sampling issues. You also get some aliasing of the music which produces artifacts.
With the case of Apple, you end up with a lower-quality format than CDs, but you get the files to keep.
Since Apple gets the majority of its song directly from studio masters you are going to tend to get quality which is about as good as that on a CD. This is because even though the AAC files are considerably compressed they are compressed in such a way that they only "lose" the portions of the audio which you are not likely to hear in the first place. CD audio samples the music mechanically and pays no attention to how the result sounds. AAC encoding is very good at retaining the original sound of the master. Yes you might hear some artifacts but you would also hear artifacts if you compared CD audio to the original masters.
I look at buying songs through iTunes this way: I'm going to want to encode the song to put on my iPod anyways so why go through the bother of encoding it myself? If I buy a CD it costs more and I'm encoding from one lossy medium (CD audio) to another (AAC). Not only that but I also have to take the time to go to the store, buy the CD, and put it in my computer to rip it. If I buy through the iTunes Music store all this is done for me, at less cost, and directly from studio masters. I've also been getting free songs through Pepsi and exclusive tracks through Apple. It seems like a good deal to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Right and for sand the teaspoons might be more efficient because less sand slips off them but for dirt the shovel might be better.
That's the whole point, it's not how quickly the processor cycles or even how much the processor does in one instruction. Rather, it's how well the processor works for some common tasks. In order to totally judge several processors you first have to test them in several different ways and then you can say, "In general, processor X is good for modeling climate because it handles floating points well and processor Y is good for image processing because it handles integers well."
This means that often there will be no one clear winner in a processor comparison and it may just come down to what you need the chip for and how well you understand how to use it. Right now, however, you have Intel pushing the idea that a high clock-rate processor is all that matters. This is misleading because most of the high-clockrate processors achieve this kind of performance by taking the risk of branch mispredictions and also by taking multiple cycles per instruction. These sort of things have an extreme negative effect on performance so much of the clock speed is wasted.
Nothing is stopping a team from doing this sort of stuff on their own. In fact, a smart team would have already run their vehicle (or previous concepts of it) through the steps that you outline here.
This is why new drivers and people who are disorientated or distracted often have trouble driving.
For new drivers there are 2 factors working here. First is the lack of experience of WHERE to look. New drivers often keep their vision trained too close in front of the vehicle. This works for very very low speeds but once you try to go road speeds you just don't have enough time to react. Experience teaches us to lift our eyes higher and seek ahead further in order to drive effectively.
The second factor for new drivers is how to handle this new kind of input. Stuff that you don't worry about when jogging or running becomes a big problem when driving, like corners and wet roads. The increased distance also means that you have to have a different sort of thought process in order to handle the increased amount of information.
With disorientated or distracted drivers they may have the knowledge of how to handle the processing of driving stimuli but since they are at diminished capacity they are not able to do so fast enough. Drunk drivers, for example, often start slewing back and forth because their reactions are lagging behind what their senses are telling them. They turn, overturn, correct, overcorrect, and so on.
Good call there. He definately just did a cut-and-paste. If you take a bit of what he said and search for it on that page you linked to then you can easily see where this is from.
Truer words were never said. If people acted instead of meekly waiting around a lot more would get done. Just look at the passengers of that last plane on 9/11. Sure the plane crashed and they all died but it crashed out in the middle of nowhere, not on the side of some building! By sacrificing their lives those people possibly saved thousands of others.
Imagine if the passengers of two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center were able to do the same thing as the passengers of the last plane. If that had happened it is likely that there would have been a much smaller loss of life.
No problems here with that. I work in the inner city of one of the tougher cities in the US and have faced down guns, knives and other implements of destruction before. If I can save the lives of a couple of hundred people but I have to risk my own then so be it. I don't have a death wish but in a terrorist situation you probably are going to die anyways, why not spend the rest of your life and use it to save some others? Hell if you are lucky you might even get the upper hand quickly and survive!
Hmm, I hadn't heard that but my statements still stand. Even if the terrorists did kill a couple of people there is no way they could have stopped the whole plane full of people. If people would just stand up and fight back you would see a whole lot less plane hijackings. Not even a pistol or two is going to be enough to prevent 100 or 200 determined people from stomping a half dozen terrorists.
Terrorists rely on one major factor when they make their plans: most people are easily cowed into inaction. Take that away from the terrorists and their plans are a lot less effective.
I don't know what idiot is coming up with these definitions but they have to go back to school and take Encyclopedia 101 and learn the first rule of a definition: Do not make it self-referencing!
Not to mention that a sharpened piece of hard plastic or other solid material is nearly as effective as any knife and probably much more effective than nail cutters, box cutters, or razor blades. They even make polymer knives that are undetectable to security scanners.
I'm all for security and stopping people from carrying serious weapons onboard an airplane but remember that the terrorists on the 9/11 flights never really had to use their weapons. They had boxes they claimed were bombs and they also had what looked to be knives but for all we know these knives were pieces of cardboard painted silver. They took over the planes mostly with fear and intimidation. Even a half dozen terrorists with nail scissors are going to find it tough to take over a plane if the passengers refuse to be intimidated and instead rush the terrorists. Sure a few people might get hurt but when the odds are 100 passengers verses 6 terrorists with pocket knives I'd say the passengers will easily take back the plane!
My favorite part of that law is the recursive definition they give for what constitutes a knife:
Apparently part of the enforcement of the law is to trap anyone trying to understand it into an infinite loop, rendering them incapable of ever using a knife due to their infinite reading of the document...
Generally when you buy at Costco or Sam's items there are two different ways to buy things. The first is as a retail reseller and the second is as a consumer. Consumers have taxes added to their purchases and those taxes are handed back to the government. The retail resellers have a tax ID that basically defers the taxes they would pay on the items. These retail resellers collect the tax when they resell the items and so they are responsible for the taxes.
I'm not exactly sure how this applies to the media tax but I assume it works the same as all other taxes such as sales taxes and gasoline taxes, the final retailer in the chain is the one who collects the taxes.
Now make sure that the users who you don't want to mess around with the printers are not admin users and you are all set. Only root and members of the admin group can use Printer Setup Utility.app. This includes the "Edit Printer List" option, because what that does is launch Printer Setup Utility.app.
The only caveat is that if you ever repair disk permissions by way of Disk Utility it may change those permissions back. Just re-do this hint after repairing permissions.
Heh, I love Mac OS X's Unix roots!
Why would you want to de-Fraggle something? They are so cute!
Unless maybe you are a Doozer, then I can see where you would want those hungry Fraggles removed...
You can also do as the other poster mentioned and just do the updates through the shell as a cron job or startup item or the like. I believe the command to check and install all updates would be:
You can fix that pretty easily, at least under Mac OS X 10.3. Go into her account, run Printer Setup Utility, double-click on any printer she may need. Control-click on the dock icons that pop up and select "Keep in Dock". That way she can just press those icons to see what the printer is printing.
Now go to go to System Preferences->Accounts and make an admin account by. Log into that admin account and go to System Preferences->Accounts. Select your mom's account and click the "Some Limits" button. Click "This user can only use these applications" then click the allow all button. Click the locate button and navigate to Applications->Utilities->Printer Setup Utility and deselect the checkbox. Close the System Preferences.
Now she can't change her printers. She can still see what's printing because the printer is in the Dock. To really be safe you can also make that printer into a desktop printer just by control-clicking on the Dock icon, selecting "Show in Finder" and then option-control-drag it to the desktop. You can also lock her ability to remove items from the Dock by selecting that option in her account settings so that she can't accidently remove the printer from the dock.
Actually this is old news. They have already had talks with Apple and they have already changed a few things. You can read about it here. Basically they changed the layout some and changed the name to pBop.
Somehow I lost part of this sentence, it should have read:
I may have not been exactly clear in the way I phrased what I said. The chronology was:
So no NDAs would have been violated. The Neistats chose to not post information that would actually help people who were having battery problems. Instead they chose to flame Apple and sensationalize the whole affair. Yeah, Apple wasn't extremely helpful by saying that it would cost $250 to repair the iPod when they had a program coming out in a few weeks for $100 but then again at that time that was the cost of a repair and the tech who mentioned the $250 cost probably didn't yet know about the soon-to-be-released replacement program.
The fact is that for a charge of about $15 over the cost of the battery the Neistats could have gotten the battery replaced at no risk. They chose to save $15 and an iPod worth a couple of hundred dollars. Is Apple to blame for this? No, these batteries are an industry standard and pretty much all have a 500 charge life-cycle, which Apple mentions in the literature. The non-user-replaceable aspect could be seen by anyone who just looked at the device for a few seconds. Caveat emptor, if you buy a product with a non-user-replaceable part then don't expect to be able to replace that part later.
Nope, if you check the dates Apple had its battery replacement program and iPod warranty extension program in place BEFORE the Neistat video and website was opened. Apple had been planning the program for months before the Neistat brothers even called them. Not only that but for several months other companies had been offering battery replacement services for about $15 more than the battery.
The Neistat brothers were told of these things, they knew about them but they still went ahead and badmouthed Apple for not having these programs. One of their original web hosts even gave them free bandwidth in exchange for them posting both the video and information about Apple's battery alternatives. The Neistat brothers ignored the web host and they only posted their negative video without seeking to really help others who needed similar services.
Overall it is only a few people who have had battery problems in as short of a time as 18 months. Many people have had their iPods much longer and still have good battery life. Apple has been very up front in saying that the batteries have a life of about 500 complete discharge/recharge cycles, a standard for that type of battery.
Yell me about it. I read all of these stories about "my computer had this virus" and "my computer had this spyware" and I realize that I am missing out on a whole subculture here because of my Macintosh, the subculture of having to constantly fix your computer.
Yeah yeah Macs will eventually get viruses and spyware but the fact is that I haven't worried about either for well over 10 years. I haven't had to install 1 anti-virus program, I haven't had to pay for 1 cleaner program, I haven't had to spend time killing hidden processes and editing registry keys. I haven't had to do anything at all.
I've said it plenty of times, I really don't care what operating system people run. Macintosh, Windows, Linux, Amiga, whatever - if it works for you then have fun! However, you should take a serious look at switching when your operating system becomes so weighed down with subversive programs that you have to spend a considerable amount of time, effort, and cash to keep it operating efficiently.
Near 100%???
Alright, who are the immortals that are screwing up dihydrogen monoxide's perfect record?
Yep, my cash is going right to Unreal Tournament 2004 when it comes out and I'm doing the same to World of Warcraft when that is released. Both Atari/Epic and Blizzard are on the ball here. It's too bad that Bungie went all micro and soft because they also used to be one of the "good guys" before they got swallowed by Bill Gate's greed.
Not to be too flippant but I have yet to have any trouble with any virus on my Mac OS X machines. Yeah, I know, it's a minor platform that will eventually get viruses. However, until then I'm enjoying the peace and quiet!
Come over to the dark side, give a virus-free platform a try!
First of all, the AIFF audio in a CD is a lossy format. You can't sample music at any bitrate and expect to retain all of the information. A 44kHz 16 bit sampled song (the format used by CD audio)only retains the frequencies below 22kHz, due to Nyquist sampling issues. You also get some aliasing of the music which produces artifacts.
Since Apple gets the majority of its song directly from studio masters you are going to tend to get quality which is about as good as that on a CD. This is because even though the AAC files are considerably compressed they are compressed in such a way that they only "lose" the portions of the audio which you are not likely to hear in the first place. CD audio samples the music mechanically and pays no attention to how the result sounds. AAC encoding is very good at retaining the original sound of the master. Yes you might hear some artifacts but you would also hear artifacts if you compared CD audio to the original masters.
I look at buying songs through iTunes this way: I'm going to want to encode the song to put on my iPod anyways so why go through the bother of encoding it myself? If I buy a CD it costs more and I'm encoding from one lossy medium (CD audio) to another (AAC). Not only that but I also have to take the time to go to the store, buy the CD, and put it in my computer to rip it. If I buy through the iTunes Music store all this is done for me, at less cost, and directly from studio masters. I've also been getting free songs through Pepsi and exclusive tracks through Apple. It seems like a good deal to me.