+/* Return true iff the connection to the remote site established
+ through SOCK is still open.
+
+ Specifically, this function returns true if SOCK is not ready for
+ reading. This is because, when the connection closes, the socket
+ is ready for reading because EOF is about to be delivered. A side
+ effect of this method is that sockets that have pending data are
+ considered non-open. This is actually a good thing for callers of
+ this function, where such pending data can only be unwanted
+ leftover from a previous request. */
+