John the Ripper isnt what i would call a lame tool. You would be surprised at how many sys admins use this to test the strength of their users passwords.
It has good word lists included and you can also download wordlists for it to use, which makes it a very useful tool for the sys admins out there!

Im not defending silverstormboy, because i dont know if his/her reason for using this is legitimate, however it is good once in a while to give the benefit of doubt to a newbie!

Cheers

r3b00+