another feature RNGs could provide

[Bill Stewart]

> > Good ciphers aren't permutations, though, are they? Because if they
> > were, they'd be groups, and that would be bad.
>
>Actually, by definition, a cipher should be a permutation from the set
>of plaintexts to the set of ciphertexts. It has to be 1 to 1 bijective
>or it isn't an encryption algorithm.

The groups-are-bad problem applies to the
mapping between keys and plaintext-cyphertext bijections,
not the mapping between plaintext and cyphertext.
You're trying to avoid the situation where
         E(x,key1) == E( E(x,key2), key3) for all x

The mapping between plaintext and cyphertext doesn't need to be 1-1 
bijective.
1-n mappings from 1 plaintext to multiple cyphertexts
can work fine for many applications,
but have the practicality problem that the cyphertext is
longer than the plaintext, and there aren't many
applications where you really want the expansion.




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