I think any SHA256-capable miners can merge mine??? It depends on the pool, or if you're solo mining.
Vlad seems to know the answer to his own question???
I'm so confused...
I used to mine at Slush's pool when it had nmc merge mining; they got rid of that, now only straight btc mining there. There are quite a few pools that merge mine ixcoin, namecoin, and devcoin. You just have to look.
Merge mining requires code changes on the alt chain and I think it was a bit of a fad as it quickly destroys the value of the alt coin tied to Bitcoin's difficulty. I really like the idea behind Namecoin (distributed DNS) but it never really took off. As far as the other alt coins go, I think they are mostly worthless as they have no advantage over Bitcoin. This is my opinion of course, and you guys are welcome to mine any alternate SHA256 currency that you like. Some have even generated more profit by switching between alternate currencies as they become more valuable than Bitcoin for short periods of time. Ultimately, I believe it only dilutes the Bitcoin network and makes our Bitcoins less valuable.