[monocasa]

They were very happy about the air force doing this.

The whole point of OtherOS (and the official Linux port to the PS2 before this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2 ) was to get the system classified as a general purpose computer rather than as a game console because that gave them import tax benefits in quite a few jurisdictions.

[HPsquared]

That's interesting. There must be other products with "odd features" for tax reasons. There was a case where Ford installed seats in a particular model of van so that it could be imported to the US as a passenger vehicle, but they removed the seats before selling. They ended up getting fined of course, but probably wouldn't have if they left the seats in and allowed the customers to remove them...

[jahmed]

Lots of products. Its called Tariff Engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_engineering.

Probably the best known example is Converse. "The felt lining on the bottom of the sneakers allows Converse to classify their product as slippers, so the company benefits from a much lower tariff rate." https://blogs.pugetsound.edu/econ/2019/02/18/tariff-engineer...

[LinguaBrowse]

Similarly, to my understanding, some cameras are perfectly capable of taking video, but disable the feature altogether (or impose a 30-minute recording time limit) to be classified as a still camera rather than a video camera for tariff reasons.