The comments about raw warnings in [1] suggest that the following improvements should be implemented:

*) no raw warnings on instanceof

e.g.

xxx instanceof List // no warning

*) no raw warnings on cast

e.g.

(List)xxx //no warning

*) no raw warnings when the type parameter of Class is raw

e.g.

Class<List> cl = ... //no warning

[1] - http://blogs.sun.com/mcimadamore/entry/diagnosing_raw_types