MIDDAY MARKETS: Lucent drags down techs

Techs struggled to stay in positive territory at midday Tuesday after a disappointment from Lucent Technologies. The Nasdaq was up 18.23 to 2,893.87 and the Dow Jones industrial average edged up 27.68 to 10,490.33.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index fell 23 to 361.78.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) was up 11 percent Tuesday after reporting fiscal fourth-quarter net income more than doubled and that sales will rise 20 percent or more this fiscal year.

Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), down 2.94 to 18, said that it might have to cut $125 million from its reported fourth quarter sales on account of a revenue recognition problem.

PRI Automation Inc. (Nasdaq: PRIA), up 0.69 to 20.63, reported fourth quarter earnings Tuesday that beat the Street's consensus, along with some hefty charges due to previously announced manufacturing problems.

ValueVision (Nasdaq: VVTV), down 0.31 to 18.62, said that it will rebrand its home shopping channel and Web site using the NBC peacock.

Finally, a dot-com arm has grown up to take care of its parent instead of rushing back to the nest. Ticketmaster Online-Citysearch Inc. (Nasdaq: TMCS), up 0.44 to 13, said it will buy Ticketmaster Corp.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) fell 0.69 to 25.13, AOL (NYSE: AOL) dropped 2.08 to 45.01 and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) lost 4.38 to 44.5.

Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) was up 2 to 53.25, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) dropped 0.06 to 24.69, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 1.5 to 42.63 and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) gained 1.31 to 68.5.