Q: When I attempt to use the "man" command on some linux machines, the output is garbled and full of escape characters.  I can't read something that looks like this:

man(1)                                                                  man(1)

ESC[1mNAMEESC[0m
       man - format and display the on-line manual pages

ESC[1mSYNOPSISESC[0m
       ESC[1mman  ESC[22m[ESC[1m-acdfFhkKtwWESC[22m]  [ESC[1m--pathESC[22m]  [
...etc.

A.  This is due to a combination of a change in the default character encoding for modern Linux distributions, and the historical general default shell RC files for the CS department.  Changing these RC files is complicated, since everyone's shell environment relies upon them.  However, there is an immediate workaround.  You can add the following line to the bottom of your .bashrc file (if you use bash, otherwise substitute your appropriate shell rc file):

unset PAGER

which will cause you to use the distribution's default pager (/usr/bin/less -isr) instead of the one set in the general rc files (/usr/bin/less).