with datagram sockets, depending on fprintf not to flush the output
early was very fragile; the new version simply uses a small fixed-size
buffer. it could be updated to dynamic-allocate large buffers if
needed, but i can't envision any admin being happy about finding
64kb-long lines in their syslog...
sadly the C language does not specify any such implicit conversion, so
this is not a matter of just fixing warnings (as gcc treats it) but
actual errors. i would like to revisit a number of these changes and
possibly revise the types used to reduce the number of casts required.