How to make pdflatex accept .eps images

Unfortunately, pdflatex does not support .eps images, for example the following code fails:

\usepackage{graphicx}
...
\includegraphics{qc.eps}

The fix is to put the following lines at the top of the document:

\usepackage{epstopdf}
\epstopdfsetup{suffix=}
\DeclareGraphicsRule{.eps}{pdf}{.pdf}{`epstopdf #1}

and compile with the -shell-escape flag:

pdflatex -shell-escape my_file.tex

Then the above code works. You need the epstopdf program that is run behind the scene.

Update: Apparently, it's enough to just include the following line at the top of the document:

\usepackage{epstopdf}

One still has to compile with the -shell-escape flag. This works for me in Ubuntu 12.04.

Thanks to: http://chi3x10.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/eps-and-pdflatex-no-more-converting-eps-to-pdf/