[Editor's note: Please see the comments for the proposed solution]
I'm using OS X Public Beta as my primary web development environment - that is I develop the html/code using my OS X box. Now, my web servers and my desktops are behind a firewall and DNS hosting has been outsourced to AT&T, so resolving my webservers' URLs "within" my network isn't possible without modifications being made to a desktop's hosts file. Under Windows and Mac OS 9 its easy -- just make the changes to the file. But the hosts file I found in "/etc" under OS X says it "isn't used" and modifications don't take hold.
Does anyone have a suggestion or know the right way to go about doing this?
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20001123153451239