problems with date command

[Alaw Guo]

Hello, 

I have systems running RedHat 9, Fedora Core 1 and 2, and on all of
them I'm having trouble with the date program.

When I give the command:

  date --date="1/1/1970 00:00:`date +"%s"`"

Shouldn't this give me the current time?

instead, on a RedHat 9 and a Fedora Core 1 system I get:

  address@hidden bin]# date ; date --date="1/1/1970 00:00:`date +"%s"`"
  Sun Jul 25 12:49:32 PDT 2004
  Sun Jul 25 20:49:32 PDT 2004

and on a Fedora Core 2 system I get:

  address@hidden cgi-bin]# date ; date --date="1/1/1970 00:00:`date +"%s"`"
  Sun Jul 25 12:50:44 PDT 2004
  Thu Jan  1 00:00:59 PST 1970

It's an uneasy feeling when you can't rely on the time.
Thanks for listening.

--alaw