Background task in Ruby

task.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
def task n
  result = 0
  for i in 1 ... n
    result += i
    sleep 0.01
  end
  result
end
t = Thread.new 100, &method(:task)
while t.alive?
  sleep 0.1
  STDOUT.print '*'
  STDOUT.flush
end
STDOUT.print "\n"
p t.value
# **********
# 4950