Well, that's John's perspective as a seismologist. My perspective as a geologist is that you can say that all quakes are related by plate tectonics. Sure, the Indian Ocean quakes were likely advanced by the M9.1 in 2004 and the M8.7 in 2005. But I also tend to think "so what?": the 8.6 still is the largest strike slip quake ever that I am aware of. It goes on my list of M8.5+ quakes, period. A graph of global moment release (energy release) will show a huge spike for late 2009 through today.

Chris