conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a title for a book about Dennis, David, Gelernter with the genre: Computers & Technology, Internet & Social Media
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Doctor Ecco's Cyberpuzzles'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Doctor Ecco's Cyberpuzzles
  Like so many mathematicians, Dr. Ecco loves puzzles. Fortunately for Ecco, people pay him to solve them. Joined by the narrator Professor Scarlet and Ecco's brilliant niece Liane, Ecco encounters a variety of puzzles posed to him by archaeologists, space station designers, generals, (reformed) criminals, and a few normal citizens. You are asked to solve them too. Some require new mathematical thinking. For most, the absolute best answers are not known, not even to Dr. Ecco. At the same time, these puzzles require no formal background beyond arithmetic and occasionally elementary algebra, though you might decide to augment your intelligence by using a computer.*
  But don't worry. Even if you are not yet able to bend a programming language or spreadsheet in service to a solution, each puzzle has at least one cybernovice alternative. Alternatives so marked can be solved best by paper, pencil, and pure thought. Those marked cyberexpert usually require a technique of searching through a list of possibilities in some clever way. The best solutions to those variants are often still open.
  How far from his humble beginnings in Chelsea, where I first saw him, a few years my junior, buying cake with his Mom. Sure he got the cake for free when he solved a brain teaser that would have stumped professional mathematicians. I thought maybe it was luck. It wasn't. After writing a brilliant doctoral thesis in mathematics while still in his teens, Ecco dropped out to pursue his present, well, profession.
  In recording his adventures, I've tried to lay out the facts to you just as they are laid out to Ecco. You can match wits with him and his sassy niece Liane.
  P.S. I've violated the chronology in the puzzle ordering I present here. But that, as you'll see, is the subject of the last puzzle.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me three more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Police commissioner Bratt returned. His entourage this time consisted of only two individuals, whom he introduced as "my colleagues Kris and Joe." What a pair! The young woman's snug black dress, silky black hair, black beret, and dark sunglasses set off her bright red lipstick. She tilted her head slightly as a greeting and then sat down lightly on the chair, with no intention of relaxing her posture. The man wore jeans held together by a toolbelt, on which were hanging a flashlight, a measuring tape, and a set of screwdrivers. His fingernails showed stains of machine oil. He sat heavily into an armchair, visibly exhausted. Then he pulled a pad out of his back pocket.
  Liane spoke up, her voice laden with sarcasm: "Versace, aren't they?" she said pointing to Kris's sunglasses.
  Kris followed Liane with her shaded gaze and continued, "You and your uncle helped the commissioner greatly in his drug-fighting efforts. You even helped convince him that I was an honest informant... though he prefers nonmathematical ways to determine honesty."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last two paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: You may have noticed that the puzzles are not in chronological order. This puzzle mixes decryption with reordering. Associated with each chapter number is a single line of ciphertext as you can see. First, reorder the chapters into approximate chronological order, then decode the manifesto... if you can. You'll find that the decryption effort informs the ordering effort and vice versa in a symbiotic way. I'm not presenting the solution for this one. You'll know when you get it.
  Dr. Ecco's cyberpuzzles : 35 puzzles for hackers and other mathematical detectives / Dennis E. Shasha.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: You may have noticed that the puzzles are not in chronological order. This puzzle mixes decryption with reordering. Associated with each chapter number is a single line of ciphertext as you can see. First, reorder the chapters into approximate chronological order, then decode the manifesto... if you can. You'll find that the decryption effort informs the ordering effort and vice versa in a symbiotic way. I'm not presenting the solution for this one. You'll know when you get it.
  Dr. Ecco's cyberpuzzles : 35 puzzles for hackers and other mathematical detectives / Dennis E.