title: Keyboard input with timeout?
body: <p>How would you prompt the user for some input but timing out after N seconds?</p>
  
  <p>Google is pointing to a mail thread about it at <a href="http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2006-January/533215.html" rel="noreferrer">http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2006-January/533215.html</a> but it seems not to work. The statement in which the timeout happens, no matter whether it is a <code>sys.input.readline</code> or <code>timer.sleep()</code>, I always get:</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-none prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;type 'exceptions.TypeError'&gt;: [raw_]input expected at most 1 arguments, got 2
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which somehow the except fails to catch.</p>