And the universe of the Foundation Series is becoming a reality: the earth is becoming one big mega-uber-tropolis, a land mass covered in a labyrinthe of buildings that are only navigable with the help of a handheld computer.

Just a thought.

That the code's creator, Patterson, " estimated that the potential combinations to solve the puzzle was "upwards of ninety millions of millions."

First of all, I take this to be 90 trillion. But I am wondering if he is correct. Any thoughts?

Well just look at how fast the numbers double:

1, 2, 4, 8,16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576
2097152
4194304
8388608
16777216
33554432
67108864

2^30 = 1 073 741 824
2^60 = 1.1529215 Ã-- 10^18

2^60 IS NOT one less than 2^61, it's HALF.