You don't want to waste your time. Once I was having issues with the mod_rewrite function within Apache. I found out some hours later, I wasn't actually working on an apache server. It was in fact a Zeus web server.

Put a nonsense line (such as 'Wooga') in your htaccess file and try the request again. If you don't see a 500 Internal Server Error message, your htaccess file is being ignored altogether or you're not working on an apache box.

Cheers
Ryan Partington