[GEEK] Getting URL objects to time out

For some reason, it is not possible to get at the Socket object that the URL object uses for its network I/O. And so, on the face of it, you can't set or change the time-out time. However here are two, semi-kludge properties that Sun has provided us to overcome that deficiency:

System.setProperty("sun.net.client.defaultReadTimeout", "10000");
System.setProperty("sun.net.client.defaultConnectTimeout", "10000");