Do you think there are aliens?

[Myrddraal]

My post was a bit cocky, but it's true nonetheless. I'll admit I haven't read of the Drake equation more than casually but... the equation is all well and good, but what is Fl? We can't even estimate its order of magnitude, so the Drake equation doesn't tell us very much about the likelihood of finding life out there without making some whopping assumptions.

EDIT:

Read the wiki, from the criticism section:

Criticism of the Drake equation follows mostly from the observation that several terms in the equation are largely or entirely based on conjecture. Thus the equation cannot be used to draw firm conclusions of any kind. As T.J. Nelson states:[19]
The Drake equation consists of a large number of probabilities multiplied together. Since each factor is guaranteed to be somewhere between 0 and 1, the result is also guaranteed to be a reasonable-looking number between 0 and 1. Unfortunately, all the probabilities are completely unknown, making the result worse than useless

Sounds about right to me.