Code Golf: Conway’s Game of Life

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Mathematica – 179 163 154 151 chars 

    a = {2, 2, 2};
    s = Export["out.txt", 
       CellularAutomaton[{224, {2, {a, {2, 1, 2}, a}}, {1,1}}, 
                (ReadList[#1, Byte, RecordLists → 2>1] - 46)/ 42, #2]〚#2〛
       /. {0 → ".", 1 → "X"}, "Table"] &


Spaces added for readability

Invoke with

    s["c:\life.txt", 100]

Animation:

alt text

You can also get a graph of the mean population over time:

alt text

A nice pattern for generating gliders from Wikipedia

aa

AFAIK Mathematica uses a Cellular Automaton to generate random numbers using Rule 30.

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