Code needs to be rewritten to use generics instead of unsafe casts everywhere

[rincebrain]

Precisely as topic says.

Since in 2003, the last time this code was compiled/updated, generics didn't exist yet in Java (they got into Java 1.5/5 in 2004, and still had strange bugs until 2006 or so), there's unsafe casts everywhere to do things that modern Java does using generics.

These are, at best, unsafe in error conditions, and should probably be rewritten into real generic typing.