You know, SHA-256 is useful for other things other than just digital signatures and other identity verification. One could use it to create a 256-bit key for AES or something by entering a "password" of any length. If they made a version that gave 1024- or 2048-bit output, I or someone else could write a program that uses the algorithm to produce secure keys for symmetricblock ciphers. In fact, I'm working on something like that right now.