[amock]

  remember that we're on x86 here, which is a big-endian architecture

While I wish this were true, x86 is little-endian.

[greenyoda]

The author correctly states that x86 has "lower bits at the beginning, bigger bits on the end", but, as you said, that's the definition of little-endian.

[ssafar]

Apparently, I even made up an explanation for why "big-endian == start with the least significant bit" totally makes sense... couldn't convince the Universe this way either though.

Thanks for catching it, fixed!