Microsoft 180s on forcing you to Longhorn to get IE 7

Mary Jo Foley's Microsoft Changes Course: New Standalone IE for XP Planned reports that Gates announced at the RSA Conference that they would make a stand-alone version of IE 7. Broad speculation on its features is occurring on Slashdot. I'm guessing that Firefox can continue to outpace IE. I will be shocked if there is any advanced features like themes or plug-ins. Why? They're a big company and their product (IE) now has a huge code base. Plus, they integrated the damn thing into the Windows shell, so there is no way they're going to go out on a limb with new features. With as many security problems as they've had, plug-ins would be the kiss of death.