[brianeyci]

Actually frequencies do make sense. The normal justification is that the Fed must open holes in their shields for their weapons to fire through. If you read the whole article, you'll see that is the only justificaton for frequency.

And there is a distinct community of people who debate sci-fi for fun, that is why they nitpick things like that =D.

SE:IV is not technobabble. Technobabble is trying to use pesudoscience to explain the mechanism behind technology. SE:IV leaves the mechanisms undefined... we don't know how ripper beams work and we don't care, only their effects, that they do 250 damage with heavy mount on a weapons platform =D.

<edit>Actually that is not exactly right. The normal justification is that the Fed doesn't possess advanced enough forcefield technology to open up holes in their shields to allow weapons to fire, like syncing a propeller with a machine gun to allow forward firing guns in WWI. Therefore, they have to use frequencies so that their phasers and photons can shoot through their shields. Needless to say, SE:V should not have this stupid frequency thing, because SE:V ships are advanced enough to have this weapons-forcefield syncronization technology</edit>

Brian