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If I were an entity that had its own TLD, say .ebh, it would be nice if people could get to my site with the minimalist URL http://ebh. Is there any way to disambiguate a TLD from a nonqualified host name to make that possible?

Sure. Just end the address with a dot, which identifies the name in the URL as being absolute.

For example, http://ai./ is a site in Anguilla that uses the TLD as its own name. However, if you leave out the dot it doesn't work -- this is a bit of a pain and most TLDs won't let anyone use the TLD itself as a name.

It actualy works for some TLDs:

http://ac./
http://ai./
http://dk./
http://io./
http://sh./
http://tm./
http://uz./
http://ws./

Here is a list of TLDs that work as web addresses: (be sure to enter them with http:/// and a dot at the end or your browser might not make it to the site, firefox for example will assume it is invalid and try adding a 'www.' and a '.com' unless i have already been to the page by explicitly adding a dot.)

http://ac./
http://ai./
http://bi./
http://cm./ (there is no http server running at the IP this resolves to)
http://dk./
http://gg./
http://hk./ (there is no http server running at the IP this resolves to)
http://io./
http://je./
http://ph./ (Here I get an ASP error, which looks to be part of an asp dispatched virtual hosting solution.)
http://pn./
http://pw./ (there is no http server running at the IP this resolves to)
http://sh./ (there is no http server running at the IP this resolves to)
http://tk./
http://to./ The shortest URL shortener in existence, having only 3 characters in the domain itself (and some browsers will work with only 2 of them)
http://uz./
http://wz./ (there is no http server running at the IP this resolves to)

So using top level domains as regular domains is very possible.

It means that eevry time an (l)user types in http://ai/ the A recors is fetched from the root servers. Not the TLD servers, the root zone servers. This is a really bad idea.

Course, if you ever saw the traffic to the root servers you'd know they're 75% retarded hits from misconfigured windows systems trying to update the root zone (rolls eyes).

Ooops, I meant to type russia.yahoo, us.yahoo, and france.yahoo"

So you have a .yahoo tld then. You haven't removed tlds (hint: you can't) you've just moved the problem one dot to the right.

There was a day when http://ai/ worked.

Why this is a really stupid idea is left as an exercise to the reader.

ai and dk should work.

I just create a list with all the short ones I could find that actually resolve.

I guess to beat that, you'd need to go with a country code domain.

ai and dk should work.
Due to DNS weirdness you might need to add a dot, as in ai. and dk.

I guess to beat that, you'd need to go with a country code domain.

ai and dk should work.
Due to DNS weirdness you might need to add a dot, as in ai. and dk.