As for the original poster's question on the mall ninja stuff:

It's hard for me to imagine what advantage you get from speeding up the opening of your knife like that by a fraction of a second. Defensively, if you really need that extra time, that means the opponent is already within fighting distance, and has probably launched his attack already. The fact that you're choosing to draw your knife says you're so skilled that you can spend time to get a weapon ready rather than responding with whatever you may already have in your hands (may be nothing). In that case you don't need to my opinion. I bow to the mall ninja.

The main application I see is impressing your friends. And also sneaking up on someone to attack him.