HACKER'S OSCAR HITS, MISSES.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

What's next, extra-early election returns? Easy access to missile-launching codes at the Pentagon?

Maybe even ... gasp! ... announcing the winners of the Oscars before the envelopes are ripped open? Heck, nobody would even have to watch the pageantry!

Nope, that type of Armageddon is never gonna happen, said officials at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, claiming that an Internet's sneak-peek list of Oscar nominees was nothing more than a ``bogus'' series of educated guesses - and a mistake-laden series at that.

``The list of nominations is maintained in strict secrecy by PricewaterhouseCoopers,'' read a prepared statement from the academy. ``Anyone claiming to have access to the actual nomination list is lying.

Academy officials declined further comment.

The sneak-peek list appeared on Harry Knowles' ``Ain't It Cool News'' Web site about 24 hours before the academy released the official list of nominees Tuesday morning. When the nominations were announced Tuesday, it was revealed that Knowles had gotten all 20 acting nominees and four of the five best picture nominees.

So is Mr. Ain't-It-Cool a psychic? A hacker extraordinaire?

Neither, said the Austin, Texas-based Knowles, who claimed the information came directly from an unprotected academy server attached to www.oscar.com, the academy's Web site. The information included detailed background on the ``nominees'' listed, and appeared to be in the format that the academy uses when it compiles its lists that are distributed to news media.

Knowles listed up to eight nominees in most categories, many of which included the five finalists. Any Web-savvy surfer could have tapped in and checked out the resource he used, Knowles added.

``A fan of the site wrote me and Matt Drudge at the same time, saying, 'Hey, maybe you want to take a look at this,' '' said Knowles. ``I took a look, started making some calls, made sure that it was an academy server, and it was.''

One problem: When the actual nominations were announced Tuesday morning, it became clear that Knowles' information contained several mistakes. Spike Jonze, a best director nominee for ``Being John Malkovich'' wasn't on the Ain't-It-Cool list. Neither were the writers of the film ``Election.'' Five of the seven ``Cider House Rules'' nominees were missing.

``Oh well,'' said Knowles, whose Web site Tuesday carried an explanation and directions on how to access the early list he printed.

In retrospect, he figures that the information was a best guess warm-up by the people who run the Oscar Web site in preparation for the actual release.

``I'm actually much happier it was wrong,'' Knowles said. ``I was trying to figure out a way to burn down the academy for not nominating Spike Jonze. To see him on the actual list was a complete pleasure.''