chill
everyone panicking needs to chill out. calm down. take a deep breath. it's not the end of the world, and your iphone is not bricked.
apple's servers are just overwhelmed with the strain of all the new 3g activations, iphone, and ipod touch upgrades going on at the same time. this doesn't mean they 'suck at managing servers' or have 'pulled a vista'. this could happen to any company, no matter how well prepared they are. no IT infrastructure is perfect.
so just calm down, you can live without your phone for a few hours while they get things sorted. come back later today, their servers will be up, and you'll be able to activate your phone by plugging it in. i'll be picking up my 3g after work today...
or you could ignore this and just go back to OMGZ I GET ERRORZ APPLE SUX WTF IPHONE