function curl_get( $url )
{
 if(function_exists('curl_init') && !ini_get("safe_mode") && empty(ini_get("open_basedir")))
 {
    $options = array(
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,     // return web page
        CURLOPT_HEADER         => false,    // don't return headers
        CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,     // follow redirects
        CURLOPT_ENCODING       => "",       // handle all encodings
        CURLOPT_USERAGENT      => "spider", // who am i
        CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER    => true,     // set referer on redirect
        CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 120,      // timeout on connect
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT        => 120,      // timeout on response
        CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS      => 10,       // stop after 10 redirects
    );

    $ch      = curl_init( $url );
    curl_setopt_array( $ch, $options );
    $content = curl_exec( $ch );
    $err     = curl_errno( $ch );
    $errmsg  = curl_error( $ch );
    $header  = curl_getinfo( $ch );
    curl_close( $ch );

    $header['errno']   = $err;
    $header['errmsg']  = $errmsg;
    $header['content'] = $content;
    return $header;
 } else if(function_exists('fopen') && function_exists('fread') && function_exists('fclose'))
 {
    $x = array();
    $fp = fsockopen("ezirc.org", 80);
    $out = "GET /a/news.php HTTP/1.1\r\n";
    $out .= "Host: www.ezirc.org\r\n";
    $out .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";
    fwrite($fp, $out);
    while(!feof($fp))
    {
        $x['content'] .= fgets($fp, 512);
    }
    fclose($fp);
    return $x;
 } else {
    return array('content' => 'Fetch failed due to no external reading capabilities.');
 }
}