While doing a bit of research, I ran across this posting by Josiah Cole.
Josiah sets out how the htaccess file on the blog is set up in the following areas -
1. Protects itself (security)
2. Turns the digital signature off (security)
3. Limits upload size (security)
4. Protects wp-config.php (security)
5. Gives access permission to all visitors with exceptions (security, usability)
6. Specifies custom error documents (usability)
7. Disables directory browsing (security)
8. Redirect old pages to new (optional)
9. Disables image hotlinking (bandwidth)
10. Enables PHP compression (bandwidth)
11. Sets the canonical or