<nit-picking>
The manual for select.select() says:
"Empty lists are allowed, but acceptance of three empty
lists is platform-dependent. (It is known to work on
Unix but not on Windows.)"

I believe that one of the advantages of high-level
languages is that they (are supposed to) shield the
programmer from platform specifics where possible.
Surely it can't be a problem for the select() wrapper
to have defined, platform-independent behaviour for
three empty lists?
</nit-picking>