How does one mine Stellar I was able to mine Ripple for a time using boinc, will Stellar offer something like this? are there other ways to mine Stellar?
The Stellar network does not have a mining-based currency. At the network's genesis, 100 billion stellars were created. The only other stellar creation mechanism is inflation. To account for both economic growth and lost stellars, there is a fixed 1% annual rate of new stellar creation. These new stellars will be generated on a weekly basis and distributed via a direct voting method.

Mining in the Bitcoin network:
1) creates the currency
2)distribute the currency
3) verifies transactions across a distributed, decentralized system.

Stellar achieves the first by generating the stellars at genesis. Distribution of stellars is regulated by the Stellar Development Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the protocol. 95% of all the stellars are set to be distributed to as many people worldwide as possible through a series of giveaways specified in their mandate. Stellar achieves the third—decentralized agreement—with the Ripple Consensus Algorithm.
In future, Stellar plans to switch to a new consensus algorithm called Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP). The technical details of SCP are detailed in a white paper by Stanford Professor David Mazieres.

One can acquire stellars by trading on an exchange, trading within the Stellar network, being a recipient of inflation voting, and/or through the Foundation's giveaway programs.