h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Confucius said: "When I walk along with two others, they may serve as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them."

Thus, the notion of accumulating imperfections is preposterous.

Also the simple fact that the process of assimilation renders the will of the subject a subservient part of the mass collective hive-mind removes the individual "imperfections" of those assimilated. The idea that the vast, cold and utterly logical collective would allow the ideosyncratic mannerisms of those assimilated to colour its perceptions and behaviour rather than simply cataloguing them as examples of imperfection encountered on their travels is just plain silly. E.g.: "This race has great innovations in stellar cartography and an intimate understanding of warp-varience manifolds; they also believe that spooning ice-cream onto electronic equipment is the best way to keep them happy...We will add their beliefs on ice-cream to our own, sod the techno-babble..."

The comment about the projectile weapons is flawed as well. The fact is that Picard was able to kill the Borg drones in First Contact with a tommy gun stemmed from the fact that the Borg had made no provision against such weapons, logically as they had no experience of the period of human history in which the holodeck fantasy was set. To suggest that you could take on the collective with such weapons would be to suggest that they would have trouble assimilating the Earth and its population right now, let alone in the time of the Star Trek universe. The fact is that as most sentient species that the Borg encounter use energy weapons it thus makes sense that they should protect themselves primarily against such weapons. The only other real alternative is to engage in hand to hand combat and a Borg drone is strong enough to make that a very bad idea. But to suggest that the personal shielding that the Borg use could not be remodulated to deflect a projectile such as a bullet is just daft.