I agree that we've always suspected that transcription isn't a high fidelity process. In fact, there is evidence that leads us to this conclusion (ex. the lack of a 'spell-checker' mechanism). However, just because we have evidence that points to an effect doesn't mean that it shouldn't be tested. The thing is, we've been surprised before. We've had evidence of other phenomena/behaviour should exist but when actually tested, it turned out that it was not as expected. For example, in the past it was thought that during ischemic events it was the lack of oxygen and nutrients that did the most damage, now it is known that reperfusion and the immune response subsequent to ischemic injury has a significant role in the damage done. As pointless as some of these experiments must seem, they still have to be run to test the conclusions of those other 'bloody' papers that the geneticists are reading.

On a side note, the genetic code is built in such a way that small errors here and there during the transcription process may not have a huge effect (64 codons represent ~20 amino acids plus a few stop codons).

and what kind of shots do i have to get when travelling back in time?

While I am a happy user of Openoffice.org and do recommend it for home users, I question whether or not it is ready for corporate deployment. The video, while obviously biased (and sort of unprofessional [slamming other products to make your own look good, really?]) does make some good points. Like it or not, the vast majority of people have grown up with Microsoft Office and any switch will incur efficiency costs due to the learning curve. In my view, OpenOffice.org was designed to be a 'home' alternative for Microsoft Office. For most users at home, especially those who use Microsoft Office almost exclusively for Word, OpenOffice.org is more than adequate. Excel, OneNote, and Access users might will usually find difficulties due to differences in equation writing etc.. Perhaps the ideal users for OpenOffice.org is the primary school, early secondary school students, whose main usage of Office suites are limited to document creation (eg, essays, papers, reports etc.). Those who dislike the compatibility issues may not realize that while Microsoft Office is the dominant software, this will always be an issue. Whenever a competitor comes close to realizing full compatibility they will introduce another 'upgraded' version of their document format. This will keep all others one step behind. Personally I believe that documents should be saved as HTML, but I don't really know what the real advantages of the .doc/.docx/.odt formats offer.

I think that there is a misconception here. The Canadian government didn't suppress the publishing of the results, rather they prevented the scientists from contacting the media. Also, in response to the statement that only government supported claims would be published, even were that true a paper has to go through various hoops in order to get published. This includes peer review to make sure that the science is legitimate. There will always be other scientists who disagree and they are welcome to publish rebuttals.

Is it just me or is this a bit depressing. Before it was look at all we've accomplished in the past 2.5 million years, now it has become: it's taken 3.4 million years to get to where we are?