long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
   long period = 10000; // 10 seconds = 10000 millis

   while (otherCondition
       && (System.currentTimeMillis() < startTime + period))
   {
       ...
   }

long finishTime= System.currentTimeMillis () + 10 * 1000;

while ( (your condition) && (System.currentTimeMillis () < finishTime) ) {
 // Do your stuff
}

if (your conditon) {
 it finished ok
} else {
 it timed out
}

This cannot be more accurate than the underlying time base, the fairness of
the scheduler and the amount of time used by each loop iteration.  If each
iteration is long you may want to consider using a Thread and having the
iteration poll a stop flag at a wide variety of points.  Or checkout
thread.join (time).

Cheers,
Matt Humphrey  matth@ivizNOSPAM.com  http://www.iviz.com/