You are misinterpreting what the Drake Equation is trying to tell you.
I found one stab at a definition for the Drake Equation at http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html. It claims that the equation was developed "as a way to focus on the factors which determine how many intelligent, communicating civilizations there are in our galaxy." And since I have not heard of any "intelligent, communicating civilizations" other than our own as of yet (and do not look at all good in tinfoil), I do not see how I could be misinterpreting it. The final, crucial, stated condition has not been proven, therefore it is bunk.
Don't get me wrong - I would be happy if ET were found someday. But he hasn't been so far, and I do not believe he ever will be.
The Drake equation could give the final value as 1. Or 1 anywhere within a reasonable distance of us. Seeing as we have been really looking for other civilizations only for something like 40 years, it isn't that surprising that even if their are other intragalatic intelligences we haven't found them yet and the distances to other galaxies are so large that our methods of search simply will not find them if they exist.
I think the point made in this article though is still valid.
With so many unanswerable variables the Drake question is of questionable value, and certainly isn't verifiable/disprovable. And the latter is rather troubling from a scientfic perspective.