Here's a patch for bug 758239.  It adds a
socket.timeout exception to the socket module, and
raises that exception whenever a timeout occurs.

I have tried to use a light hand, making only
(hopefully) correctness-preserving edits as opposed to
attempting any more radical restructuring of the way
internal_select() is used.

The diff is against the CVS current version of
socketmodule.c.

I have tested this by hand on my x86 Red Hat 9 system,
and it works correctly.  I have also done "make test"
and had no failures related to the socket module
(though I too am seeing a failure of test_strptime).

I do not have a Windows build environment available to
me, so I have not tested my changes on Windows.

/Bob