The Rules:

The Game of Life was invented by John Conway (as you might have gathered). 
The game is played on a field of cells, each of which has eight neighbors 
(adjacent cells). A cell is either occupied (by an organism) or not. 
The rules for deriving a generation from the previous one are these: 
Death: 
If an occupied cell has 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 occupied neighbors, 
the organism dies
(0, 1 neighbors: of loneliness; 4 thru 8: of overcrowding). 
Survival: 
If an occupied cell has two or three neighbors, 
the organism survives to the next generation. 
Birth: 
If an unoccupied cell has three occupied neighbors, 
it becomes occupied.  

another version:

Like in Conway's Game Life there is infinite field on 
which cells have eight neighbours. But unlike that each 
cell have three state: empty (weight=0), young(weight=1), 
old(weight=2). Next time for each cell sum of neighbours 
weight is calculated. For: 

Empty - if w={5,6} then young else empty 
Young - if w={2-6,8} then old 
elsif w=9 then young (rule of oldless)
else emtpy 
Old - if w={3-5} then old else empty 
