Traditionally (pre-2000?), one had to use a special "crossover cable" to do direct connections like this, but apparently modern Gigabit ethernet adapters are able to detect this situation automatically?
Patch cables are outside of walls and designed to be moved around and plugged and replugged. They are terminated with 8p8c "male" connectors, commonly called rj45. Stranded cable is used because it's much more flexible.
edit: as for length, it depends. you won't get a gigabit over 150m of crap cat3, but you will get a link, even if it's 10 half-duplex.
My problem with the article was that "patch" doesn't seem to add any useful information. Unless he was using a restrictive definition intending to exclude things like crossover cables (which still work), he could have just as well said "transfer files over a blue Ethernet cable" with equal precision.
If he meant to say that at this point in time "you can use _any_ ethernet cable to transfer files directly between two computers", I think it would have been better to say that rather than appearing to add a restriction on the type of cable required.