Well, I was obviously generalizing, not stating that no programs anywhere need to run faster. However, taking your example, the filters can't really be optimiz

Well, I was obviously generalizing, not stating that no programs anywhere need to run faster. However, taking your example, the filters can't really be optimized because they're applications run on top of a bloated operating system which isn't optimized for the reasons I mentioned. Writing a highly optimized program to run directly on the hardware of a given machine would speed up filters tremendously but also be a trade-off in terms of manageability.