.htaccess without the '?' : Working locally, but not on production server

[eluser]BilliamTheSecond[/eluser]
Thanks for the response. I was not aware of the path_info issue.

To clarify though, I don't mind having different setups for production and local development; I just need a working production setup

Using request_uri and index.php?/$1 has this problem I mentioned:

.. this setup means that any additional query string causes a 404 error. This kills some jquery scripts that add ?_=(timestamp) to ajax requests to avoid the cache.

Ex: http://site.com works, but http://site.com? will 404
or
http://site.com/controller/method works but http://site.com/controller/method?anything-at-all will 404

I don't need query strings for my application, but I need those pages to work anyway.