This post is more a personal reference than an actual blog post 
On our development machines we install SharePoint on the same user, and every time the Publishing features site collection activation gives an Access Denied error. I could just use different users so that the application pool runs under an authenticated user that allows remote activation of features. But I prefer to just run :
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>
stsadm -o activatefeature -name PublishingResources -url http://website
on the server itself
