override http.ssl_version to TLSv1 not working

Question

I am trying to force Ruby's net/http and net/https to use TLSv1 instead of SSLv3.

I have read a lot of articles which say that you can do this with one of:

http.ssl_version = :TLSv1

http.ssl_version = "TLSv1"

but neither seems to work, I keep on getting this error:

SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=SSLv3 read server hello A: sslv3 alert handshake failure

I am using ruby ruby 1.9.3p551, rails 2.3.18. Any help would be really appreciated, Thanks!