Gof Design patterns: applicability in what scenarios

I am trying to understand design patterns and I have started with GoF design patterns and I found this question in SO

I also understand there there are other categories of design patterns like: J2EE design patterns, Patterns of Enterprise Application architecture.

My doubt is:

Does GoF design pattern be applied to "standalone" kind of applications? I have difficulty in understanding in how can GoF design patterns be applied to, say remote look up in an distributed application.

Can anyone please help me understand what is the real situations / kind of applications where GoF design patterns can be applied.