Due to the bug where minors are given outstanding tech, I shut them off (e.g. 0 minor races). However, apparently, this wasn't enough to keep them out of my game. The jagged knife showed up. Since I greatly dislike the Jagged Knife, and especially dislike the bug, I reloaded from an autosave. However, if I understand correctly, the Jagged Knife are really not supposed to show up if minor races are off.

As it stands, the ultra tech bug had already struck via the pirates. The pirate hordes ascended to another existence, thus preventing tech victory. But at least the pirates can't trade their techs to the other races and create the major annoyance that this bug can cause.

Sadly, my primary reason for playing TA tonight didn't happen... which was to try and duplicate an entirely different bug... d'oh.