open-uri ECONNREFUSED problem

[cyrusg]

I'm working on a simple scraping tool and the open() method has suddenly stopped working! This 2 line program fails with a ECONNREFUSED exception in open-uri:

require "open-uri"
open("

http://www.yahoo.com")

from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:134:in `open_uri'
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:424:in `open'
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:85:in `open'
from /Users/cyrus/Desktop/test.rb:3

/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:41:in `initialize'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:83:in `new'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:83:in `connect'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:82:in `timeout'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:55:in `timeout'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:82:in `connect'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:64:in `initialize'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:430:in `open'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:430:in `do_start'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:419:in `start'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:324:in `start'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:544:in `proxy_open'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:525:in `direct_open'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:169:in `open_loop'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:164:in `catch'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:164:in `open_loop'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:134:in `open_uri'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:424:in `open'
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/open-uri.rb:85:in `open'
/Users/cyrus/Desktop/test.rb:3