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Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

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Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#141

Post by enobrev »

bloopernova wrote: post #117
brightball wrote: post #84

Privateer. It’s an older game that I always thought could be a great MMO game these days.

Which one, the bitmap-based-ships version, or the later 3D-based-ships with the Clive Owen acted videos? I know what you mean, though. Elite: Dangerous is good, gorgeous looking, and utterly massive, but very light on RPG elements. EVE is/was too full of people whose enjoyment of the game was predicated on spoiling yours. I haven't played Star Citizen, really not sure if I ever will. (Elite is something I will be goi…

The later version of Privateer is the reason I'm a Clive Owen fan

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#144

Post by MegaDeKay »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #16

Hypercard

I'm schocked that I had to read this far down to find Hypercard. It is such a highly regarded piece of software, though I sadly never had the opportunity to use it myself. I can't help but wonder what it might have turned into had it been open sourced, made cross platform, and allowed to flourish.

And while I'm here, WordPerfect 4.2. That program was a high water mark in word processing for me. What I wouldn't give to hit Alt-F3 in Word to Reveal Codes [0].

[0] https://mltshp.com/p/1EL4C

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#145

Post by robbiemitchell »

InGodsName wrote: post #75

I want an app which let's me design webscrapping workflows visually. Then once workflow is completed, upload it to cloud and run N instances of this workflow. There was a software called SpiderClimber for this. Unfortunately, the author disappeared and software too. Edit: i want to extract ad banners from websites, think Google ads or any other ad network ads. Pop ads etc... Including redirect sequence and page's scr…

You can build this with scrapinghub.com — IIRC it’s a portia project.

Kimono was the best for this until it went through a quiet exit to Palantir.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#148

Post by petra »

John_KZ wrote: post #67
petra wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the best software, the sass world has created, Google - it's orders of magnitude more valuable than any PC based software. So maybe it isn't fair to say the user for a bad deal.

Google is a jumbled mess of multiple pieces of software, and you get access to none of them, only a search service, and it is loosely defined. Also Google isn't particularly good at anything nowdays, except maybe NLP. Their ability to deliver good results is only a result of massive spying. Many researchers would be able to provide software 10x as useful as that of Google given access to the same data. Imagine a pre-…

>> Many researchers would be able to provide software 10x as useful as that of Google given access to the same data.

That's interesting. Can you share more about this ?

As for your pre-sass search engine idea:it's great. Very useful indeed.

But how do I get from that , to finding the bunch of separate webpages that describe how to solve my personal, niche problem( in a really good way ? Most problems are like that. Context is always different.

And yes Google is far from ideal. And SEO sucks.

But still, that problem solving capability is now available to many.

Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

#150

Post by hackerman12345 »

ioman wrote: post #46

Microsoft MapPoint. This was a phenomenal piece of mapping software and had features I haven’t been able to find in any of the online map replacements. When getting directions, you could designate a number of areas on the map as “avoid area”. You could map all sorts of census data. Want to colorize the map based on crime rate divided by median home price? No problem. You could import lots of data from a spreadsheet a…

Won't happen. Apps with those features get accused of being racist.

https://www.npr.org/2012/01/25/145337346/this-app-was-made-f...

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