While trying to read an e-book from Drexel's library, I got:

"We have detected that you are attempting to access this book from a Linux-based browser, which is not yet supported by the ebrary Reader."

I was using Firefox, so I can't imagine I'm not actually supported. I read up on spoofing user agents, and there are one-off instructions, a Firefox addon, and a list of idiotic websites.

The one-off method (a la John Bokma, link above):

• about: in address bar to get the current user agent string. In my case Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/2007102514 Firefox/2.0.0.9
• about:config in the address bar
• right click on the window background and select New->String
• name the new string general.useragent.override
• impersonate Firefox on a Mac with Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4 (from David Atkins on Zytrax)
• delete your override string when you're done

Hrm, while the spoofing worked, now I get: Download/Install ebrary Reader™ Plug-in for Macintosh. On to learn about ebrary, a browser for my browser. Able to do all the things my current browser can't, like view images. You'd think they could at least link PDFs for those on less popular OSes. Ah I suppose they are worried about people stealing the copyrighted material. Sigh.

There is also a wine hack to get things working in the short term. One of the comments points out that the wine info is now up at ebrary. Users of non-apt distros certainly "can try" to install using their directions, sigh.