SSL (HTTPS) with 2.4

[Bloke]

Yes,  on looking into it, sockets.ssl is not installed with
activepython, so it doesn't recognise https.  So I have removed it, and
reinstalled the v 2.4.1 which I downloaded from www.python.org .  This
leaves me with with the problem where the script 'hangs' for a long
time, then returns:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Documents and
Settings\rhall\Desktop\software\python\auth_example_5.py", line 18, in
?
    f = urllib2.urlopen('https://www.directshares.com.au/')
  File "C:\Python24\Lib\urllib2.py", line 130, in urlopen
    return _opener.open(url, data)
  File "C:\Python24\Lib\urllib2.py", line 358, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "C:\Python24\Lib\urllib2.py", line 376, in _open
    '_open', req)
  File "C:\Python24\Lib\urllib2.py", line 337, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "C:\Python24\Lib\urllib2.py", line 1029, in https_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPSConnection, req)
  File "C:\Python24\Lib\urllib2.py", line 996, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
URLError: <urlopen error (8, 'EOF occurred in violation of protocol')>

I'm stuck...