This bug was fixed in Python 2.3 but has resurfaced in 
Python 2.4

The original bug report can be found at: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?
func=detail&atid=105470&aid=673797&group_id=5470

The method urlopen both in urllib and in urllib2 crashes 
if socket.setdefaulttimeout has been called. Below is a 
cut and paste when using the function in urllib.


>>> import socket
>>> socket.setdefaulttimeout(30.0)
>>> import urllib
>>> urllib.urlopen('https://members.tufts-
health.com/memindex.html')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
  File "C:\Python24\lib\urllib.py", line 77, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\urllib.py", line 180, in open
    return getattr(self, name)(url)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\urllib.py", line 374, in open_https
    h.endheaders()
  File "C:\Python24\lib\httplib.py", line 794, in 
endheaders
    self._send_output()
  File "C:\Python24\lib\httplib.py", line 675, in 
_send_output
    self.send(msg)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\httplib.py", line 642, in send
    self.connect()
  File "C:\Python24\lib\httplib.py", line 1069, in connect
    ssl = socket.ssl(sock, self.key_file, self.cert_file)
  File "C:\Python24\lib\socket.py", line 74, in ssl
    return _realssl(sock, keyfile, certfile)
IOError: [Errno socket error] (2, 'The operation did not 
complete (read)')

Thanks a ton!