:Communications link failure com mysql jdbc exceptions jdbc4 CommunicationsException

I'm working on getting my database to talk to my Java programs.

Can someone give me a quick and dirty sample program using the JDBC?

Contents of the test file:

import com.mysql.jdbc.*;
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.PreparedStatement;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.sql.Statement;
public class SqlTest {
    public static void main(String [] args) throws Exception {
        // Class.forName( "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" ); // do this in init
        // // edit the jdbc url 
        Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection( 
            "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/projects?user=user1&password=123");
        // Statement st = conn.createStatement();
        // ResultSet rs = st.executeQuery( "select * from table" );
        System.out.println("Connected?");
    }
}
I'm getting a rather stupendous error:
Exception in thread "main" com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException: Communications link failure 
    The last packet sent successfully to the server was 0 milliseconds ago. The driver has not received any packets from the server.
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27)
    at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:409)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createCommunicationsException(SQLError.java:1122)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.createNewIO(ConnectionImpl.java:2260)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.(ConnectionImpl.java:787)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.JDBC4Connection.(JDBC4Connection.java:49)
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27)
    at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:409)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.getInstance(ConnectionImpl.java:357)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.NonRegisteringDriver.connect(NonRegisteringDriver.java:285)
    at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:582)
    at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:207)
    at SqlTest.main(SqlTest.java:22)
Caused by: com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException: Communications link failure
    The last packet sent successfully to the server was 0 milliseconds ago. The driver has not received any packets from the server.
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method).......