Where would I use a bitwise operator in JavaScript?

Example:

Parses hexadecimal value to get RGB color values.

var hex = 'ffaadd';
var rgb = parseInt(hex, 16); // rgb is 16755421


var red   = (rgb >> 16) & 0xFF; // returns 255
var green = (rgb >> 8) & 0xFF;  // 170
var blue  = rgb & 0xFF;     // 221