AS3/AIR 1.5 -SIMPLE- Socket Server with Java

[ImprisonedPride]

I was just wondering if there was any reason this wasn't working. Basically I'm writing an application (let's call it a game so I can keep this thread here because it probably would be useful for games too) and I originally wanted to use FSCommand to launch video files. Unfortunately, until AIR 2.0 this is impossible and you need an external process running so, knowing java can launch files, I decided to write a simple socket server to pass the file path to and have Java execute it for me. Here's the AppSocket class:

package com.hsg.util {
	import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.*;
    import flash.net.XMLSocket;

    public class AppSocket extends Sprite {
        private var hostName:String = "localhost";
        private var port:uint = 8080;
        private var socket:XMLSocket;
		private var sendData:String;

        public function AppSocket(data:String) {
			sendData = data;
            socket = new XMLSocket();
            configureListeners(socket);
            socket.connect(hostName, port);
        }

        public function send():void {
            socket.send(sendData);
        }

        private function configureListeners(dispatcher:IEventDispatcher):void {
            dispatcher.addEventListener(Event.CLOSE, closeHandler);
            dispatcher.addEventListener(Event.CONNECT, connectHandler);
            dispatcher.addEventListener(DataEvent.DATA, dataHandler);
            dispatcher.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, ioErrorHandler);
            dispatcher.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.PROGRESS, progressHandler);
            dispatcher.addEventListener(SecurityErrorEvent.SECURITY_ERROR, securityErrorHandler);
        }

        private function closeHandler(event:Event):void {
            trace("closeHandler: " + event);
        }

        private function connectHandler(event:Event):void {
            trace("connectHandler: " + event);
        }

        private function dataHandler(event:DataEvent):void {
            trace("dataHandler: " + event);
        }

        private function ioErrorHandler(event:IOErrorEvent):void {
            trace("ioErrorHandler: " + event);
        }

        private function progressHandler(event:ProgressEvent):void {
            trace("progressHandler loaded:" + event.bytesLoaded + " total: " + event.bytesTotal);
        }

        private function securityErrorHandler(event:SecurityErrorEvent):void {
            trace("securityErrorHandler: " + event);
        }
    }
}

And here is my single file Java socket server:

import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;


public class simpleServer
{
	public static void main(String args[])
	{
		// Message terminator
		char EOF = (char)0x00;
		
		try
		{
			// create a serverSocket connection on port 9999
			ServerSocket s = new ServerSocket(8080);
			
			System.out.println("Server started. Waiting for connections...");
			// wait for incoming connections
			Socket incoming = s.accept();
			
			BufferedReader data_in = new BufferedReader(
					new InputStreamReader(incoming.getInputStream()));
			PrintWriter data_out = new PrintWriter(incoming.getOutputStream());
			
			data_out.println("Welcome! type EXIT to quit." + EOF);
			data_out.flush();
			
			boolean quit = false;
			
			// Waits for the EXIT command
			while (!quit)
			{
				String msg = data_in.readLine();
				try {
					System.out.println("Executing: " + msg);
					Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(msg);
				} catch (Exception err) {
					System.out.println("Error.");
				}
				
				if (msg == null) quit = true;
				
				if (!msg.trim().equals("EXIT"))
				{
					data_out.println("You sayed: <b>"+msg.trim()+"</b>"+EOF);
					data_out.flush();
				}
				else
				{
					quit = true;
				}
			}
		}
		catch (Exception e)
		{
			System.out.println("Connection lost");
		}
	}
}

And here's how I call it:

		private function launchFile(path:String) {
			var sock:AppSocket = new AppSocket(path);
			sock.addEventListener(Event.CONNECT, blah);
		}
		
		private function blah(de:DataEvent) {
			trace("TEST DATA BEING SENT");
			de.target.send("TEST DATA");
		}

Now, it will show the path in java, but my problem is that it takes something like 10-30 seconds for Java to finally display the message it received. Is there a way to speed this up? Also, it's failing to execute the file. Flash does receive the message "Welcome! Type EXIT to quit.". It will trace out the path I give (i.e C:\Users\Public\Videos\vid.avi) but it never executes. After it displays the path it immediately terminates the java program. Output:

Server started. Waiting for connections...
Executing: C:\Users\Public\Videos\vid.aviError. java.lang.NullPointerException
Connection lost

Process completed.

If anyone could figure what I'm doing wrong here, I'd much appreciate it. This app is so far behind schedule it's not even funny because I didn't realize they changed FSCommand capability in AS3/AIR.

I am working with Adobe CS4 Professional, AIR 1.5, AS3, on Windows 7.