#!/usr/local/bin/php
<?php
$fp = fopen("php://stdin", "r"); #same result with a file
$text = fread($fp, 100);
fclose($fp);
$fp2 = fopen("http://cnn.com", "r");
$text2 = fread($fp2, 100);
fclose($fp2);
?>

CGI version of php 4.0.5 (4.0.2 did the same too) with default "./configure"

default php.ini too

The URL fopen usually goes through (meaning the server of the called URL usually gets the request), but the response is unreadable since the file-handle isn't valid. If I'm missing something totally obvious I apologize in advance. Thanks so much. 
-Graham Warden