Your dusty old PC may hold the cure for cancer

Researcher David Baker believes the key to an AIDS vaccine or a cure for cancer may be that old PC sitting under a layer of dust in your closet or the one on your desk doing little else but running a screen saver.

Those outdated or idle computers may be just what Baker needs to turn his ideas into scientific breakthroughs.

Baker, 43, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, realized about two years ago that he didn't have access to the computing horsepower needed for his research -- nor the money to buy time on supercomputers elsewhere.

So he turned to the kindness -- and the computers -- of strangers.L33tdawg: I recently started contributing my processor time once again to Seti@Home :D