Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which killed seven astronauts and shattered the idea that space travel would be as routine as air travel is today. The whole thing is made even more poignant by the loss of the Columbia crew three years ago.So, what happened? Basically, bad management in the name of good PR. The shuttle shouldn't have launched that morning, and flight techs and ground crews told NASA this. Still, the launch was greenlighted, and 73 seconds later, the first teacher in space and six other astronauts were dead.

The …

Whoever owns mallninja.com didn't renew their domain, and it's gone. I went looking for the original thread on GlockTalk, but they don't have it in the archives. Does it mean that the eternal wisdom of Gecko45 and SPECOPS is gone? No! For I once saved the original pages (as text), and I'm going to mirror them here.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Allow me to explain, young Grasshoppa. The Mall Ninja is an elite operator, usually with some shadowy Special Forces experience, whose job it is to guard our nation's shopping centers from Chechen …

This is the second-generation Hi-MD playback unit. Notice the similarities to last year's MZ-E630 MDLP player. This unit has the HD amp as well as a connexion for an external battery pack. The internal battery is still the old NiMH one they've been using for the last few generations, but I'm not complaining as it's interchangeable with all the old ones I have floating around.

As you can see, it's only slightly larger than the discs themselves, but it's still a bit thicker than the EH1.

…

A bit back I posted that Rio had gone belly-up. All assets had been sold to Sigmatel, and hope for anything developed by their team looked lost.

Looks like I jumped the gun.

Turns out, Sigmatel has kept Rio's development team, along with everything they'd been working on when Rio closed up shop. According to a thread on Riovolution, the whole STMP3600 reference design that was planned for the Chroma is still alive and well, and will likely be used as the foundation for other players soon. That includes the best features of the Karma (gapless …

This is very similar to an event that once happened to me. Gansta Homey Tip of the Day: retain your weapon and ensure you've got it under control when robbing someone. This guy just didn't get it:

A few years ago, I ran a record store in a bad section of town. MC Pimpin' Twitch walked in with a Jennings J22 tucked in the back of his pants. When he drew it to brandish, the weapon slamfired, discharging into his left leg on a downward trajectory. A .22 can do alot of damage that …