prior to this change, a large portion of libc was unusable prior to
relocation by the dynamic linker, due to dependence on the global data
in the __libc structure and the need to obtain its address through the
GOT. with this patch, the accessor function __libc_loc is now able to
obtain the address of __libc via PC-relative addressing without using
the GOT. this means the majority of libc functionality is now
accessible right away.

naturally, the above statements all depend on having an architecture
where PC-relative addressing and jumps/calls are feasible, and a
compiler that generates the appropriate code.