That's news to me. I remember a few years back I needed to use crossover cables, but I thought any recent network card would compensate automatically, crossover or not. I've lost track of which of my cables are crossover and which are standard. I know i've used crossover cables with switches and regular cables for direct connections, and have not had any problems.
I mean, it's just silly that in the year 2008, you still need to worry about wires crossing to get networks working. Anyway, in my experience, I haven't had to worry about this for a few years now.