After buggering the javadocs, i finally stumbled across the SSLContext
class, which seems to be the key to this nasty bit of work. The final
results look like this (no idea if it is _supposed_ to work like this, but
this does it's job)

try {
 // defer init to be able to create meaningful exceptions
 synchronized (SSLConnection.class){
   if (factory == null){
     SSLContext ctx = SSLContext.getInstance("SSL");
                   
     TrustManager manager = new X509TrustManager(){
       public void
       checkClientTrusted(X509Certificate[] arg0, String arg1) {}

       public void
       checkServerTrusted(X509Certificate[] arg0, String arg1) {}

       public X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() {
         return new X509Certificate[0];
       }
     };
                   
     ctx.init(null, new TrustManager[] {manager}, null);
     factory = ctx.getSocketFactory();
   }
 }
} catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e) {
 IOException ioe = new IOException("Could not initialize SSL Algorithm");
 ioe.initCause(e);
           
 throw ioe;
} catch (KeyManagementException e) {
 IOException ioe = new IOException("SSL key management failure");
 ioe.initCause(e);
           
 throw ioe;
}