how do i use a bin file to open the real thing

What exactly are you trying to do?
Some examples:
cd /bin
ls

knoppix@ttyp0[bin]$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 2471 1678 793 68% /
/dev/cdrom 716626 716626 0 100% /cdrom
/dev/cloop 1871680 1871680 0 100% /KNOPPIX
/ramdisk 303324 14340 288984 5% /ramdisk

knoppix@ttyp0[bin]$ ps -aux
Warning: bad syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See http://procps.sf.net/faq.html
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.0 72 72 ? S May22 0:04 init [5]
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW May22 0:00 [keventd]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SWN May22 0:00 [ksoftirqd_CPU0]

knoppix@ttyp0[bin]$ uname -a
Linux Knoppix 2.4.22-xfs #1 SMP Fr Sep 19 17:55:45 CEST 2003 i686 GNU/Linux

If you want to find out information on a command then type: man [options]
exp. man ps

I'll wager a guess: do you mean you downloaded a program with a ".bin" extension?

If that's the case, then open a terminal and cd to the directory you downloaded it in. Make sure the file has "execute" privileges. Assuming the file is named program.bin, you can do this like:

chmod u+x program.bin

Then you can run the program with this command:

./program.bin



That's about all I can figure unless you explain what you mean by "open the real thing".