DownloadRaw -- it sucks less than WebClient.DownloadString

gistfile1.txt

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;

namespace wctest
{
	static class Program
	{
		static void Main(string[] args)
		{
			var data = DownloadRaw("http://master.open-ra.org/VERSION");
			Console.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(data));

			var ev = new ManualResetEvent(false);
		}

		static byte[] DownloadRaw(string url)
		{
			var uri = new Uri(url);
			var ip = Dns.GetHostEntry(uri.DnsSafeHost).AddressList[0];

			using (var s = new TcpClient())
			{
				s.Connect(new IPEndPoint(ip, uri.Port));
				var ns = s.GetStream();
				var sw = new StreamWriter(ns);

				sw.Write("GET {0} HTTP/1.1\r\nHost:{1}\r\n\r\n", uri.PathAndQuery, uri.Host);
				sw.Flush();

				var br = new BinaryReader(ns);
				var contentLength = 0;
				for (; ; )
				{
					var result = br.ReadLine();
					var kv = result.Split( new string[] { ": " }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries );

					if (result == "")
					{
						/* data follows the blank line */

						if (contentLength > 0)
						{
							var block = new byte[contentLength];
							br.Read(block, 0, contentLength);
							s.Close();
							return block;
						}
						else
						{
							s.Close();
							return new byte[] {};
						}
					}
					else if (kv[0] == "Content-Length")
						contentLength = int.Parse(kv[1]);
				}
			}
		}

		static string ReadLine(this BinaryReader br)
		{
			var sb = new StringBuilder();
			char c;
			while( (c = br.ReadChar()) != '\n' )
				if (c != '\r' && c != '\n')
					sb.Append(c);

			return sb.ToString();
		}
	}
}