I'm curious whether Hakmem Item 154 works when not written in assembler. If you have access to a machine that you believe does not do twos-complement arithmetic, please run the following C99 program and report the results:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
#include <assert.h>
static char*char2bin(register char x){char*r=(char*)malloc(sizeof(char)*8);assert(r!=NULL);for(register int i=1;i<9;++i,x>>=1)if((bool)(x&1))r[8-i]='1'; else r[8-i]='0';return r;}int main(){char*x=char2bin((char)0xFF+(char)0xFF); assert(x!=NULL);printf("%s\n",x);free(x);return EXIT_SUCCESS;}

(There are no system calls in there, so I think you should trust me even if you don't know exactly what it's doing.)

20th Century Fox Home Videos
PO Box 900
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USA

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am writing in the hopes that you can inform me when to expect a release of the Fox television series Millennium on.If no release date is planned, may I encourage your organisation to schedule it as soon as possible so that fans like myself do not have to resort to downloading bootleg copies in violation of your copyrights.