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Who is this "Wall Street Journal Reader" the Inq is writing about?

His name, it says, is Mike Magee. He's on the intro para of a story about multi-core programming,  Microsoft, and Intel; and he's described as "Wall Street Journal reader Mike Magee..."

The story:

WALL STREET JOURNAL reader Mike Magee says Microsoft and Intel are expected to announce a joint research project to engage in programming for multicore processors.

We all know Mad Mike Magee: co-founder of the Register, founder of the Inquirer. So why is this story on the Inq being so coy about who he is? Why not "former Editor of the Inquirer"?

The story itself isn't exclusive to the Wall Street Journal. It seems likely they picked it up from E E Times nearly a week ago, which said:

Intel and Microsoft will help fund a new Parallel Computing Lab at the University of California at Berkeley. The effort hopes to take a leading role in the scramble to define a parallel programming model that will serve the multicore computer processors already on the drawing board.

They know it's the real Magee. The story actually links to his blog, which he's running pending his "new venture" to be announced in the next couple of weeks.

The key fact may be found in the answer to the question "What is Mad Mike's new venture?" and the answer to that (we're told) is "He's launching another Web journal."

The difference between it and the Inq will probably rest in the hands of lawyers, but my contacts inside Inquisive Media expect competition from him.

"We hear he's out-sourcing journalism to India," said one nervous-sounding Inqling. "In the mean time, we're just linking to each other."

If they're counting on flattering Mike as a way of avoiding competition,  then I think they're way off. If they think quoting MadMikeMagee.wordpress.com is safer than lifting the story straight from the WSJ, they may have a point, but they could dodge the WSJ easily enough by quoting E E Times.

Well, it makes the waiting that little bit more exciting...