How will Ripples be distributed? What is the distribution plan to get Ripples (XRPs) distributed to the general public? How will hoarding / spoofing be tackled?

(E.g. with a faucet based on Google account auth, one could open several google accounts and get "too many" XRPs).
The "ideal" distribution strategy for OpenCoin, is to give away the 50 billion XRP in such a way that spurs adoption but does not create a surplus which will depress prices. Adoption is spurred by handing out generous helpings of XRP to a small audience. This is what they are doing by handing out 50,000 XRP to every Bitcointalk.org user that has a sufficiently aged forum account. Every week they have been reducing the amount given out.

Very soon they will give out just enough XRP to fund the reserve requirement for an account, plus a couple of trust lines and a couple of order book offers (About 400 XRP at the current requirements).

They want to make sure that each individual can only receive a free serving of XRPs once, or else they will have a surplus of XRP that can be sold, depressing the price. I would expect they would leverage existing identification services such as OpenID, Facebook, Google+ type of systems by creating apps.

They could also leverage the gateways, which already collect personal information on every user as part of "Know Your Customer" and "U.S. PATRIOT Act." By hashing this information according to some standard method, it would be possible to filter duplicates across gateways.