'urllib2' has introduced a configurable 'timeout' setting by assigning
to the 'timeout' attribute of the urllib2.Request object. However the
implementation is flawed:

- the 'timeout' attribute is set in OpenerDirector.open() and nowhere else

- if someone overrides OpenerDirector.open() (btw: mechanize does
  this), then the 'timeout' attribute will never be set, breaking
  other parts of the code which require the 'timeout' attribute to be
  present.

A simple workaround for this would be to do one or more of:

a) define the 'timeout' attribute as socket._GLOBAL_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT at
   class-level

b) initialize the 'timeout' attribute on urllib2.Request.__init__()