it is right to do the updating in the AWT-main-thread. so I'd suppose it's safer to do this:
when you catch the interrupted exception
you should call "Thread.currentThread().interrupt()" - unless the current thread is the AWT-main-thread, of course. otherwise the thread does not die.
this polling thread will most probably never be interrupted, but for data retrieval in a gui, it is important.
see this very good article on stopping threads:
http://www.javaspecialists.co.za/archive/Issue056.html Chantal
[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: Chantal Ackermann ]