Also, the RVO doesn't rely on inlining, and there's no default construction or assignment operator in that example, MyObj x = ... is a constructor call not an assignment.

Sure RVO is a hack, but it's a safe and useful one (in many more situations than apenwarr's map case) so why do you care? Any why would anyone ever ever use C++ without an optimising compiler?! If you don't care enough about performance to use a decent compiler then why are you using C++ in the first place?

The only downside to the RVO (apart from the fact that the wikipedia article is incomplete and doesn't distinguish RVO and NRVO) is if you're relying on side effects of copy constructors, but that usually only happens in toy code people write to try and understand C++ rules.

My only other quibble is with the statement that you always know 'this' when you create a pointer-to-member-function. If that's how you use PMFs no wonder you don't find them useful ;)