Are Java Generics totally and utterly pointless?

Question

I am new to Generics. I have worked through the following Sun trail, but think Generics are completely pointless:

http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/generics/generics.html

Am I missing something fundamental? Because it seems to be that, if the argument was an Integer rather than an Object, you'd get the same behaviour as the example that uses a Generic instead.

I also believe that supplying a String to an Integer gives a compile time error?

Thanks