Home > Software > Collusion

Collusion

Collusion is an application that detects plagiarism. Ideal for teachers wanting to save time before reading through homework or develpers with source code, this software checks the texts within a directory for similarities. Any copying that has taken place can be found before spending any time reading the essays.

Version 1.1 (released 01/04/08)

Not just .txt files can be checked, but all of the following; .txt, .c, .cpp, .cxx, .cc, .csv, .tli, .tlh, .h, .hpp, .hxx, .hh, .inl, .rc, .resx, .idl, .asm, .inc, .vb, .resx, .xsd, .wsdl, .htm, .html, .aspx, .ascx, .asmx, .asax, .config, .asp, .asa, .css, .xml, .jsl, .java

Note: there is also a free Word Document to Text converter available to download and install separately.

Version 1.0 (released 24/01/08)

Compares documents against each other to spot similarities.

If you're interested in educational software, you might like to make time lapse videos or long exposure photos, which can be useful for science experiments.

Requirements:

A computer with 200Mb of RAM

FAQs:

Q1: What limitations are there in the trial version?
Q2: How much does Collusion cost to buy?
Q3: How do I get started?
Q4: What settings can I specify and what do they do?
Q5: Does Collusion work with Windows Vista?
Q6: Is there a Mac version of Collusion?
Q7: Is there software out there that can batch convert .doc files to .txt?
Q8: This almost does what I want. Can I pay for some bespoke changes to be made?

Q1: What limitations are there in the trial version?
A1: Only the first 250 words of each document in the directory with be checked for plagiarism.

Q2: How much does Collusion cost to buy?
A2: Collusion is shareware, not freeware. Version 1.1 costs $20. (Please also read the notes on the column to the right if you intend to purchase Collusion.)

Q3: How do I get started?
A3: Installation includes a directory called "small" (probably "C:/Program Files/Nimisis.com/Collusion/small") of 20+ small texts containing around 1500 words each. (These texts are chapters from Matthew and Mark's Gospels because they are known to contain similar sections.) Start Collusion and click browse, then select any of the files in the small directory. The contents of the folder will be shown in the list box. Click "Check" to start the calculation process. Once complete, the "See Similarities" button can be pressed which show the results. Select one from the list and the two texts will be displayed, with the similar areas highlighted. Note that each result also has a similarity score. The higher the score, the more likely some copying / plagiarism has taken place.
A folder called "large" is also included. This contains Matthew (~24K words), Mark (~15K words) and Luke (~26K words). Whereas, usually the trial version only compares the first 250 words of each text, it does allow the special case of having these three larger texts compared to each other.

Q4: What settings can I specify and what do they do?
A4: The current settings can be found in the registry (Start->run->type "regedit"->click OK) They are listed under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SOFTWARE->Nimisis->Collusion.
Making MU more negative will focus the search to word mismatches.This is to be used in conjunction with DELTA and should be negative. It is set to -0.33 by default
Making DELTA more negative will focus the search on finding sequences of matching words. This is to be used in conjunction with MU and should be negative. It is set to -0.5 by default.
Each document is split up into groups of text with a maximum number of words. NUM_WORDS_PER_GROUPING sets this value. A higher number requires more RAM memory but with focus matches to the most relevant. A lower number will find more matches, however these could be less significant. Minimum recommended is 500, maximum 4000. The default is 1000.

Q5: Does Collusion work with Windows Vista?
A5: Yes, but a couple of customers did report problems with the license validation and having the default directory for saving frames set to drive C:\, though these were resolved. (Note that the registry key on Vista is "Computer\HKEY_USERS\[some guid]\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Nimisis\Collusion." This can also be found using "Find" in regedit.)

Q6: Is there a Mac version of Collusion?
A6: No, but there hopefully will be soon. A customer has reported being able to emulate Windows XP on Max OS X using a program called Parallels. VMWare should also do the trick.

Q7: Is there software out there that can batch convert Microsoft Word (MS Word) .doc files to .txt?
A7: Yes, here's a free doc to txt converter we made earlier.

Q8: This almost does what I want. Can I pay for some bespoke changes to be made?
A8: In short, yes. Contact us with details of what you need and we'll provide a quote.

Collusion [comments]

Download Now [Mirror]
Free download 5.4MB
[pad file for download sites]

A Paypal account is not required to buy a license. Credit cards are accepted. Before completing your order please first read the instructions below the screenshot.

Screenshot:

Purchase via the "Buy Now" button above. This takes you to the Paypal website where you can pay $20. (Payment via credit card is also accepted by Paypal.) PayPal then immediately notifies our database that the transaction has taken place. Please then retrieve your license by going to this page with your Paypal transaction email address and the two lines of info obtained from the License Info button on the Purchase Collusion dialog box that pops up when you start Collusion. This info contains your hard drive serial number and is used to encode the license. Note that the license, and therefore a fully functional version of Collusion will only work on that one computer. For multi-user licenses (i.e. more than 10) please contact us.

Problems? Try the FAQs and the Google Group (see below) first. Comments, like suggestions for the next version are very welcome.

Related tags

Collusion, software, education