A Question about Oracle Patches

Dear Sir,

I am new to the Oracle and I have a question in my mind about Oracle Patches.While I am searching in "My Oracle Support"  for Oracle Patches for my Oracle version (10.2.0.4), It will list out set of Patches sorting by Operating System.(Here My Operating System is Microsoft Windows XP 32 bit)

But apart from that, Patch List consist of another type of patches called "Genaric Platform Patches". So my question is,

(1). what is the meaning of "Genaric Platform" ?

(2). Are these patches that can be applied any platform (Operating System) ?

Thank You in advance.
Pradeep.