Perhaps this was true at some point, but at least
for ActiveState's perl, IO::Socket uses non-blocking
mode in conjuction with IO::Select to implement
the timeouts.
Update: Well, this is true, the code is there,
it uses non-blocking mode instead of alarm(), but it
appears to be broken in Win32. <sigh>
Comment on Re: (tye)Re: Socket timeouts without ALARM