Thank you so much David. Making mods to files is nothing new for me... Working with php in a non-webserver like environment (i.e. not using get) is though. Thank you for your help. The mod works via phpshell, so I expect that it will work fine via cron.
Probably would have felt less griefed if in the process of denying my access to get/wget and lynx, somebody had notified me of the change prior to its being enacted.